Politics, War, People, Poverty, Human Rights, Pollution

Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most.

“Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens,” Human Rights Watch begins the country’s profile on its website.

Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia and human rights groups willing to function legally have to go no further than investigating things like corruption or inadequate services. Campaigning for political freedoms is outlawed.

One of such groups, which failed to get its license from the government, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was cited by AFP as saying the kingdom was holding around 30,000 political prisoners.

Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Farhan Al-Saud, who spoke to RT from Dusseldorf, Germany, confirmed reports of increased prosecution of anti-government activists and said that it’s exactly what forced him to defect from his family. He accused the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent and explained how the Saudi mechanism for suppression functioned.

“There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the prosecutor’s office are accountable to the Interior Ministry. This ministry’s officials investigate ‘crimes’ (they call them crimes), related to freedom of speech. So they fabricate evidence, don’t allow people to have attorneys”, the prince told RT Arabic. “Even if a court rules to release such a ‘criminal’, the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even though there is a court order to release him. There have even been killings! Killings! And as for the external opposition, Saudi intelligence forces find these people abroad! There is no safety inside or outside the country.”

The strong wave of oppression is in response to the anti-government forces having grown ever more active. A new opposition group called Saudi Million and claiming independence from any political party was founded in late July. The Saudi youths which mostly constitute the movement say they demand the release of political prisoners and vow to hold regular demonstrations, announcing their dates and locations via Facebook and electronic newspapers.

Human rights violations are driving people on to the streets despite the fear of arrest, according to activist Hala Al-Dosari, who spoke to RT from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

“We have issues related to political and civil rights, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. These are the main issues that cause a lot of people to be at risk for just voicing out their opinions or trying to form associations, demonstrate or protest, which is banned by the government.”

The loudest voice of the Saudi opposition at the moment is a person called ‘Saudi Assange’. His Twitter name is @Mujtahidd, he keeps his identity and whereabouts secret and is prolific in online criticism of the ruling family, which has gained him over a million followers.

“The regime can destroy your credibility easily and deter people from dealing with you if your identity is public,” Mujtahid wrote to RT’s Lindsay France in an email.

Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud announced his defection from the Saudi Arabian royal family on July 27.

“They don’t think about anything but their personal benefits and do not care for the country’s and people’s interests, or even national security,” his statement reads as cited by the website of Tehran-based Al Alam International News Channel.

The prince criticized the royal family for silencing all voices calling for reforms and said he learned of the common Saudis’ sufferings having gone through “horrible personal experience,” without specifying exactly what it was.

The Twitter activist’s anonymity is understandable. The most recent example of what can happen to activists is the case of Raif Badawi, the founder of the Free Saudi Liberals website, who was found guilty of insulting Islam through his online forum and sentenced the activist to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.

In June, seven people were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for ‘inciting protests’ via Facebook. The indicted denied charges and said they were tortured into confession.

“The government is obviously scared of the Arab revolutions. And they’ve responded as they usually do: by resorting to oppression, violence, arbitrary law, and arrest,” Prince Khaled says, adding that so far the tougher the measures the government took to suppress the dissent, the louder that dissent’s voice was.

“The opposition used to demand wider people’s representation in governing bodies, more rights and freedoms. But the authorities reacted with violence and persecution, instead of a dialogue. So the opposition raised the bar. It demanded constitutional monarchy, similar to what they have in the UK, for example. And the Saudi regime responded with more violence. So now the bar is even higher. Now the opposition wants this regime gone.”

There was a time, at the beginning of the Arab Spring movement in the region in 2011, when the government tried to appease opposition activists by a $60 billion handout program by King Abdullah, according to Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for the Asia Times. He calls that move an attempt to “bribe” the population. However there was also a stick with this carrot.

“The stick is against the Shiite minority – roughly 10 percent of Saudi Arabia – who live in the Eastern province where most of the oil is, by the way. They don’t want to bring down the House of Saud essentially. They want more participation, judiciary not answering to religious powers and basically more democratic freedoms. This is not going to happen in Saudi Arabia. Period. Nor in the other Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] petro-monarchies”.

Escobar points out the hypocrisy of the Saudi Arabian rulers, who feel free to advise other regional powers on how to move towards democracy, despite their poor human rights record.

“They say to the Americans that they are intervening in Syria for a more democratic post-Assad Syria and inside Saudi Arabia it’s the Sunni-Shiite divide. They go against 10 percent of their own population.”

‘Buying favors from West’

Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on opposition has been strongly condemned by human rights organizations, but not by Western governments, which usually claim sensitivity to such issues.

“The White House certainly does maintain a long-standing alliance with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, cemented by common political, economic and military interests in the Middle East,” said Prince Khaled.

Germany came under fierce criticism last week over its arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which have almost tripled in just two years, from 570 million euro in 2011 to almost one-and-a-half billion in 2012.

And Angela Merkel’s government has approved weapons exports of more than 800 million euro in the first half of this year – suggesting the level will continue to grow.

“With arms they [Gulf States] are also buying favors from the West. They are insuring the maintenance of their legitimacy on spending massive amounts of money that are pouring into Western economies,” Dr. Ahmed Badawi, co-executive director of Transform, which studies conflicts and political developments, told RT.

In 2012, Amnesty International claimed that German-made small firearms, ammunition and military vehicles were commonly used by Middle Eastern and North African regimes to suppress peaceful demonstrations.

“Small arms are becoming real weapons of mass destruction in the world now. There is absolutely no way to guarantee that the weapons that are being sold legally to countries like Saudi Arabia, even Egypt, do not fall into the hands of terrorists. The two important examples are German assault rifles found in the regions in Mexico and also in Libya. And there’s absolutely no way of knowing how these weapons ended up there,” Badawi said. Source Videos at source.

According to Mehmanparast, the conference dubbed “Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none,” will be held in Tehran on March 17th and 18th.

“Officials from various countries, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations have been invited to attend the conference,” the Iranian spokesperson added.

“The conference has been widely welcomed by all countries,” he went on to say.

Mehmanparast further pointed out that all the countries in the world have the right to use peaceful nuclear energy.

“We believe the world must be free from nuclear weapons,” he asserted.

Earlier, Mehmanparast had urged the countries which possess nuclear weapons to destroy their atomic armaments.

“We insist that all countries must be committed to nuclear disarmament,” he said early February. Source

Well we all full well know the US nor Israel will ever get rid of their Nuclear Bombs. But kudos to Iran for attempting this type of meeting.

This is a greater threat to the US and Israel then Iran actually getting a Nuclear Bomb. Both the US and Israel would have to give up their Nuclear Weapons. They are the two countries that more times then not are the ones who also start the wars. They are the warmongers. Loosing their Nuclear Weapons would be their worst nightmare. They will fight this tooth and nail.

India snubs US, to attend nuclear meet in Iran

April 4 2010

The Indian government will stand by its decision to take part in a nuclear meeting slated for mid-April in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in a move that is set to irk the US administration.

According to a report published by The Hindustan Times on Sunday, the conference dubbed “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapon for None” will be held on April 17 and 18 in Tehran. The Indian Ambassador to Iran, Sanjay Singh, will represent India at the event, which will be attended by ministers, officials and nuclear experts from over 55 countries.

The decision to participate in the international nuclear disarmament meet comes while Washington continues its efforts to impose new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

The Tehran event will be held only days after a nuclear security summit between US President Barak Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington on April 12 and 13.

Earlier, India rejected a call from the US to walk away from pipeline project carrying natural gas from Iran through Pakistan, saying “energy security” is a priority for its rapidly growing economy.

Iran and Pakistan inked a deal in March to construct a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline connecting the two neighboring countries, and India is interested in the further extension of the line to its borders if the pipeline’s security can be guaranteed in Pakistan. The project is strongly opposed by the US. The deal is part of the long-delayed $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project. Source

Israel to use anti-Iran strike to win Chinese backing

The Israeli regime plans to send its top military strategist to China this week to convince Beijing to back sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.

Head of Tel Aviv army’s planning directorate Major General Amir Eshel intends to serve Beijing with ‘renewed’ threats of military strikes against Iran, wishing to persuade China to follow along with the US-led push at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, British weekly newspaper The Sunday Times reported today.

According to the weekly, a subsidiary of the multi-national press conglomerate The News Corporation owned by Jewish media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Eshel will warn officials in Beijing that an Israeli military attack on Iran could disrupt oil supplies to China and its rapidly growing economy.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed Israeli threats of military strikes against Iran as psychological warfare aimed at pressuring the Islamic Republic to abandon its peaceful nuclear work while insisting that any efforts to materialize such threats will encounter a ‘painful’ response.

The Israeli regime and its Western backers have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapon capability under the guise of a civilian nuclear program.

Iran, however, has fiercely dismissed such claims as mere attempts by Western nuclear powers to prevent Iran’s rapid advances in the field of nuclear technology.

Aggressive Israeli efforts against Iran’s nuclear program come despite widespread reports of its possession of over 200 nuclear warheads that was acquired with blessings from Tel Aviv’s Western sponsors. Israel has refused to sign or commit to any international atomic regulatory treaties.

Meanwhile, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has opened its nuclear facilities to intrusive inspections and round-the-clock supervision by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Moreover, Iran has also called for an international abandonment of all nuclear weapon arsenals and development efforts, which has been ignored by all countries possessing nuclear weapons.

IAEA has repeatedly reported that it has found no evidence of any diversion of nuclear materials from civilian to military applications in Iran.

That, however, has not stopped Washington from seeking to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran through the UNSC.

Tehran insists that the sanctions are illegal as they aim to deny the Islamic Republic the legitimate right to full nuclear fuel cycle for civilian use, in contradiction to NPT regulations.

China, a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, has so far resisted US pressure to toughen embargoes against Tehran, insisting on continued dialogue as the appropriate channel to resolve nuclear concerns about Iran.

However, Israeli and its American sponsor have recently stepped up efforts to pressure China to fall in line with the sanctions drive.

The US and Israel have been collaborating closely in recent months to intensify efforts to muster support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic. These efforts have included using press reports and allied countries to generate a high level of urgency on the issue.

For instance, US tried to get Saudi Arabia to intervene on the matter by enticing China with attractive oil deals in order to drive a wedge between Beijing and Tehran, prompting Chinese consent to the US-led sanctions efforts.

Meanwhile, press reports spread rumors last month that the Saudis have given the Israeli regime the permission to use their air space for any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a claim denied by Riyadh.

Iranian officials have scorned US claims that their sanctions drive enjoys international backing, arguing that Europe and the Israeli regime do not constitute a global representation. Source

Both the US and Israel are trying to dictate to other countries what they should do. I do believe all countries have the right to progress in a peaceful way they see fit and not bend to the will of the two who are the warmongers.

After all they are the warmongers who create fabricated documents and fabricated reasons to go to war. They are the two that lie their way to wars.

Why would anyone trust either country is beyond me. These are the two countries that literally piss off the rest of the world with their wars on innocent people.. Their actions speak for themselves.

Billions around the world have protested against both of them and for good reason. They are the planets bullies. Both countries have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The criminals behind those crimes are still warmongers and walking free.

Maybe it is time for the US and Israel shut up and listen to the rest of the world.

A group of British lawmakers will call on Tuesday for a review of the way arms deals to Israel are approved, after the government admitted British equipment was “almost certainly” used during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, British media reported.

The British daily The Guardian quoted a House of Commons report on strategic exports controls, which stated, “it is regrettable that arms exports to Israel were almost certainly used in Operation Cast Lead [the attack on Gaza].

“This is in direct contravention to the UK government’s policy that UK arms exports to Israel should not be used in the occupied territories,” the report read.

Those MPs making the call for a review said they welcomed the British government’s decision to revoke five export licenses for equipment “destined to the Israeli navy,” the daily wrote, with lawmakers adding that “broader lessons” must be learned from such a review to “ensure British arms exports to Israel are not used in the occupied territories in the future.”

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the House of Commons following Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009 that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead, that all future arms exports to Israel “will be assessed taking into account the recent conflict,” adding that Israeli equipment used during its war on the coastal enclave likely used British-supplied parts such as cockpit displays in US F16 combat aircraft, fire control and radar systems, navigation and engine assemblies for US Apache helicopters, the daily reported.

Additionally, arms sold to Israel included parts for guns and radar in Israeli Sa’ar-class corvettes which took part in the operation, and armored personnel carriers adapted from Centurion tanks sold to Israel in the 1950s.

The government-approved exports to Israel are estimated to be over 27.5 million British pounds for 2008, the House of Common’s report said, with various governmental departments approving nearly 4 million British pounds worth of export licenses for weapons and equipments with both military and civil use in the nine months following the attack on Gaza, The Guardian reported.

“Though this suggests a significant drop, the figures show Britain was continuing to sell Israel a wide range of military equipment, including small-arms ammunition and parts for sniper rifles,” the daily added.

The report further revealed that the British government decided to revoke a number of arms sales’ licenses to Sri Lanka, saying it regreted that British arms were sold during the ceasefire periods in the conflict with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The call for a review on the way the British government approves arms deals with Israel follows their decision to expel an Israeli diplomat over the use of forged UK passports in an alleged Israeli hit of a Hamas leader in Dubai in January.

WASHINGTON — The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel

Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.

“This was a political decision,” an official said.

In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.

“All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010,” a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. “This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly.”

Under the plan, the U.S. military was to have stored 195 BLU-110 and 192 BLU-117 munitions in unspecified air force bases in Israel. The U.S. military uses four Israeli bases for the storage of about $400 million worth of pre-positioned equipment meant for use by either Washington or Jerusalem in any regional war.

In January 2010, the administration agreed to an Israeli request to double the amount of U.S. military stockpiles to $800 million. Officials said the bunker-busters as well as Patriot missile interceptors were included in the agreement.

The decision to divert the BLU munitions was taken amid the crisis between Israel and the United States over planned construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem. The administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has warned that Washington could reduce military aid to Israel because of its construction policy.

In 2007, after its war in Lebanon, Israel requested 2,000 BLU-109 live bombs from the United States. The 2,000-pound bomb, produced by Boeing and coupled with a laser guidance kit, was designed to penetrate concrete bunkers and other underground hardened sites.

Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was quoted as saying that his country faced its biggest crisis with the United States since 1975. A pro-Israel lobbyist said Oren was referring to the current U.S. embargo, which echoed a decision taken 35 years ago by then-President Gerald Ford after Israel’s refusal to withdraw from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Oren has since denied the remark.

They use the weapons to destroy the lives of defenseless Palestinians. They have no bombs, planes, tanks etc. They are defenseless.

Anyone who supplies weapons to Israel need to re-examine their position.

Israel spends billions a year on weapons.

Meanwhile Palestinians don’t have enough food, medical supplies or materials to rebuild. They live in a prison. Even those in the West Bank are treated horridly. Daily bad things happen to them. Arrests, land theft, destroyed homes, etc.

Israel is the master of fabricating lies to justify their actions. Of course they use the same old sorry lies over and over however. They demonize anyone who speaks out against their actions. Israeli leaders and Lobby groups perpetrate more hate towards others then any group I am aware of. They even demonize Jews. They perpetrate more ant Antisemitism then anyone. Sad but true.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leaving for Washington tonight, has promised the Obama administration Israel will make several goodwill gestures toward the Palestinian Authority in response to Washington’s demands.

For the first time since Operation Cast Lead, Israel has agreed to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Netanyahu has agreed to discuss all core issues during the proximity talks, with the condition of reaching final conclusions only in direct talks with the PA.

Netanyahu also agreed to discuss the core issues in the dispute – including borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements, water and settlements – already during indirect talks, although summations would be made in direct talks with the PA president.

Netanyahu responded to Washington’s demands during his telephone call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday night. Clinton said on Friday that Netanyahu’s response “was useful and productive, and we’re continuing our discussions with him and his government.”

Netanyahu refused to revoke the building project in Ramat Shlomo or freeze construction in East Jerusalem. He also promised a better oversight system to prevent embarrassing incidents such as the one that triggered the crisis with the U.S. during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.

Senior officials in Jerusalem said that the prime minister’s gestures include relieving the blockade on Gaza and enabling the UN to transport construction materials to rebuild sewerage systems and a large flour mill, and build 150 apartments in Khan Yunis.

Netanyahu also agreed to release hundreds of Fatah-affiliated prisoners as a gesture to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in keeping with the view of the defense establishment on the effect this will have on the release of Gilad Shalit.

Netanyahu is scheduled to leave for Washington tonight with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to attend the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington. Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni and Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau will also attend the convention.

Netanyahu is slated to address the convention tomorrow at 7 P.M. (Israel time), then meet Clinton, who is also to speak at the AIPAC gathering. No meeting has been set yet between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, but Israeli officials believe such a meeting will take place on Tuesday in the White House, and contacts are progressing in this regard.

Israel’s Washington envoy Michael Oren said yesterday that outsiders cannot force peace on the Middle East, and any final settlement will have to be initiated by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Oren spoke in an interview with U.S. television station PBS. Oren said Israel was not interested in having the White House present its own peace plan, in view of the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Any attempt by the United States to impose a peace deal would be like “forcing somebody to fall in love,” Oren said.

Asked if Israel wanted Washington to present its own peace plan, Oren said: “No. I think peace has to be made between two people sitting across a table. America can help facilitate that interaction.”

Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said yesterday after getting a closer look at Israeli enclaves in the West Bank that Israeli settlement building anywhere on occupied land is illegal and must be stopped. “The world has condemned Israel’s settlement plans in East Jerusalem,” Ban told a news conference after his brief tour. “Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.”

It’s sad but not a surprise that we don’t hear so much as a peep from our Government or the United States over the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Could you imagine the world outrage if Hamas stole the passports from other countries’ citizens to use as cover for an execution squad?

Imagine the shrill condemnation if they tricked an Israeli military leader to travel to another country where he or she was ambushed and throttled to death.

Imagine a death squad of up to 26 assassins infiltrating a neutral country to carry out such an atrocity.

It seems we can’t get over the myth we’ve created of the little plucky nation of Israel defending itself against the Islamic hordes intent on destroying them.

The fact is Israel has the fourth largest military machine in the world and is the only nuclear power in the region.

Israelis think it’s acceptable to have their country, that was built on the theft of land and the homes of the original inhabitants and that imprisons the entire Palestinian people, and then arm themselves with nuclear missiles to intimidate any country that objects.

It is the sole superpower in the region backed up by the only world superpower. It’s a different story for Iran, which has its two closest neighbours invaded and occupied by massive hostile armies.

It is surreal that our news of the killing of al-Mabhouh is focused on passport thefts rather than the cynicism of a rogue nation that feels a God-given right to assassinate its enemies as it sees fit.

The posturing from those nations, who had their citizens’ identities used as aliases for terrorism, is pathetic.

The best they could come up with is calling in the Israeli ambassador for a telling off. Without doubt, these victims of passport theft will be on the international terrorist watch list whenever they travel.

When their governments are pushed about what actions will be taken against Israel for putting their citizens in danger, they retreat into gobbledygook. Israel is already gloating that these protests are just for show and will die down soon enough. That is until next time it decides to murder someone.

The international media seem more interested in the mechanics of murder. There’s certainly no discussion about sanctions against Israel or calling for the murderers to be extradited to face justice.

It is almost accepted that it’s okay for Israel to entrap and murder its enemies as some sort of pre-emptive strike.

I will assume al-Mabhouh was indeed a leader of Hamas prepared to import arms into Gaza. But this is a land where almost a million and a half citizens are walled off from the rest of the world by Israel and being bled into submission. Nothing goes in and nothing out.

The Palestinian people there are in desperate peril, yet the rest of the world ignores their plight. When these people try to fight back with home-made bombs they are invaded, their civilians massacred and their homes levelled.

Israel keeps the media away, then denies its atrocities and attacks anyone who tries to tell the truth.

So Palestinians see people like al-Mabhouh as freedom fighters fighting for them.

The twisted and ugly truth is Hamas was actually created and funded by Israel to undermine the secular, nationalist Fatah. Now it’s backfired.

Fatah would do anything for a deal with Israel, but can’t because of Hamas.

So everyone in Israel and Palestine is stuck in a revolving nightmare with no end.

Peace will only come when Israel admits it has visited a monstrous evil against the land’s indigenous people and that a genuine settlement can only be reached if it gives up some of its stolen land, pays compensation for the rest and recognises an independent state of Palestine.

Instead it thinks it can continue to use brute force to impose its will on the weak and hunt down and murder those who dare to fight back.

Um Hamza, a 22-year-old pregnant woman, from Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, woke up at night numerous times during the 22-day Israeli war which ended on Jan. 18, sniffing the smell of gas.

Several weeks later she started experiencing terrible pain in the abdomen. Although she had been pregnant for two months then, it was impossible for her to conduct necessary tests as the hospitals were overwhelmed by injured people of Israeli bombardments.

The pain continued for a couple of months before she was finally able to get the medical checkup, and the results left her shocked and speechless. The child she was carrying suffered from malformation and may die either inside her womb or shortly after birth.

The baby came to this world while his brain hung out of his head like a bag of skin covering his eyes, therefore, the baby will never experience sight. Meanwhile, he could not breathe either because of the malformation in his nose as it appears clogged.

The baby’s grandfather, who knew about his grandson’s malformation two months after he was born, said he wished Hamza had died before birth so he could escape the torture, no matter how long.

Um Hamza said she hopes her son would receive treatment abroad, as technology in foreign countries is more advanced, though the chances of recovery is slim.

Since the Israeli Operation Cast Lead last winter, the besieged Gaza Strip saw an increase in the proportion of fetus and newborns malformations.

Thabet Masri, director of neonatal division in the community of medical healing, told Xinhua that from July to September, the rate of children born with different congenital deformities was 17 per month, compared with nine per month over the same period of 2008.

He said the increase of fetal deformity cases is related to the radioactive and toxic materials resulting from Israel’s use of prohibited weapons.

Although fetus malformation was caused by several reasons, we should not ignore the impact of toxic substances and chemicals, especially the white phosphorus, which Israel used in a disproportional way during the war, and white phosphorus is prohibited to use in places of civilians, said the doctor.

White phosphorus bombs are internationally considered dangerous in terms of its impact on respiratory system.

Doctors at the incubation department in the Shifa Hospital said exposure to toxic chemicals and radioactive substances primarily lead to fetal malformations in the first months of pregnancy when the neural tube is formed.

Italian scientists said this month that The Gaza Strip’s soil contains poisonous and cancer-causing materials after collecting soil samples from several areas bombed during the war.

RT interviews German journalist Jurgen Elsaesser, author of the book “Iran: facts against Western propaganda”. He thinks Tehran has every right to produce nuclear energy. And fears that “extremist Israeli government could provoke war with Iran at any time”.

Pictures included. This is what the US has in mind for Iran, with Israel pushing for war all the way. Be sure to check it out. These are the things the US does not want you to know. The horror of war is real.

Iran has done nothing wrong. The comply with International Laws.

The US and Israel do not.

Both countries have committed War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

Iraq: I Should have called the link below ” Iraq a Picture is worth a Thousand words”.

The United States Navy will be decimating millions of marine mammals and other aquatic life, each year, for the next five years, under their Warfare Testing Range Complex Expansions in the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS under NOAA), has already approved the “taking” of marine mammals in more than a dozen Navy Range Warfare Testing Complexes (6), and is preparing to issue another permit for 11.7 millions marine mammals (32 Separate Species), to be decimated along the Northern, California, Oregon and Washington areas of the Pacific Ocean (7).U.S. Department of Commerce – NOAA (NMFS) Definition:“TAKE” Defined under the MMPA as “harass, hunt, capture, kill or collect, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, kill or collect.” Defined under the ESA as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” Definition: Incidental Taking: An unintentional, but not unexpected taking(12).

The total number of marine mammals that will be decimated in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico for the next five years is unknown. The NMFS approvals will have a devastating impact upon the marine mammal populations worldwide and this last Navy permit, which is expected to be issued in February 2010, for the “taking” of more than 11.7 million marine mammals in the Pacific will be the final nail in the coffin for any healthy populations of sea life to survive.
Now with ever-increasing numbers of permits being issued for sonar programs in more than twelve ranges in the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic regions of the United States, our marine mammals and other sea life are facing complete devastation. When you add bomb blasts to this list, warfare testing of all types, future war testing practice, and the toxic chemicals which are both airborne and to be used underwater, there is little chance that most marine life will survive in any significant numbers. Our U.S. Senators and U.S. Congressmen refuse to postpone these disastrous “takings” or hold U.S. Congressional Hearings while pretending to be ocean environment friendly in their re-election speeches.

Earlier this year, June 8th through June 16, 2009, a delegation from Connecticut and California spent time walking the halls of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. We left petitions, color fliers, and information about saving our marine mammals, requested a postponement and U.S. Congressional Hearings. Ninety-nine senate offices were visited and 2/3 of offices in the U.S. House of Representatives. The silent response from our elected officials regarding these two requests has been zero…one U.S. Congressman even stated that citizens would be “laughed out of the halls of the U.S. Congress for suggesting that we protect our marine mammals”. Corporate paid “Lobbyists”, who hand out money by the $Millions, on the other hand, are always accepted at hearings, give testimony, and are welcomed in the halls of Congress…apparently the voices of citizens of the United States are not given the same status.

These virtually unregulated Navy Warfare Testing Programs already approved are now taking a toll on marine mammals, the fishing and ocean tourism industries, and on all aquatic life. Many U.S. Senators and Congressmen are ignoring these issues by pretending that they doesn’t exist even though they have been informed in advance of these programs.

A brief history of the Navy Warfare Testing Program is needed to understand the full implications of this Pentagon/Navy Warfare Testing Program. In 2004, the Bush Administration signed a bill weakening U.S. Environmental Laws (1), with regard to the U.S. Navy. And then in 2008, President Bush signed an executive order allowing the Navy to be exempt from environmental laws which protects endangered and threatened species (2-4). The Navy Southern California Complex was the first one to benefit from this executive order. Soon other Navy Range Complexes were obtaining exemptions from the NMFS with little or no oversight or significant mitigation measures (5).

A partial listing of known Navy Range Complexes (6), shows the amazing scope of the disaster. According to U.S. Congressman Waxman in a letter dated March 12, 2009: “…The Navy estimates that its sonar training activities will “take” marine mammals more than 11.7 million times over the course of a five-year permit…The sonar exercises at issue would take place off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Hawaii, Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico – affecting literally every coastal state. In many regions, the Navy plans to increase the number of training exercises or expand the areas in which they may occur. Of particular concern are biologically sensitive marine habitats off our coasts, such as National Marine Sanctuary and other breeding habitats…In all, the Navy anticipates that its sonar exercises will “take” marine mammals more than 2.3 million times per year, or 11.7 million times over the course of a 5-year permit….” This statement was made in response to public inquiries regarding the Navy Northwest Training Range schedule for Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

KTVU Oakland San Francisco Television Station is the only television station to investigate and air a story about this U.S. Navy program (13), on May 18, 2009. It took a great deal of courage, in the face of the fact that no other major television networks would carry this story. A few courageous radio stations are also helping to get the word out to the public.

Published in the United States Federal Register on March 11, 2009:

The United States Navy published an application, as an addendum to their expanded Warfare Testing program, in the U.S. Federal Register, dated March 11, 2009. This application from the Navy “…requests authorization to take individuals of 32 species of marine mammals during upcoming Navy Warfare testing and training to be conducted in the NWTR areas (off the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon, and northern California) over the course of 5 years…”

The “taking” of marine mammals negatively impacts the entire ecology of our oceans and the life in them which feeds large numbers of people and other species around the world. It should be noted that the list of toxic chemicals that the Navy proposes to use is a long one as noted in the Navy E.I.S. Depleted uranium, red and white phosphorus, mercury, lead, and a whole host of chemicals known to be toxic not only to man, but to marine life, are being served up on the “Navy Warfare Chemical Menu” that will contaminate our air, water, and soil.

Since all of the Navy Warfare Training Range Complexes have received, or will receive in the near future, permits to “take” marine mammals during their respective 5-year warfare training programs the cumulative and synergistic effects of losing millions of marine mammals will be disastrous. It is time to say no to any future permits being issued by the National Marine Fisheries Services. Please feel free to file protests by the August 12, 2009, deadline National Marine Fisheries Service (9), regarding the U.S. Navy Environmental Impact Statement (10).

On May 28, 2009, U.S. Congressman Mike Thompson from California, in a Press Release to NOAA, made the following statements which could be directed toward any ocean Navy testing range:

“…I am concerned about the United States Navy’s ability to properly review the environmental impacts of proposed enhancements in its Northwest Training Range Complex (NWTRC)… I am particularly concerned that NOAA’s existing mitigation measures may not be best suited for the protected marine mammals and endangered salmonids present in the Pacific Northwest… I am also concerned about proposed changes to current levels of activity in the NWTRC that focus on training for new aircraft and ship classes and physical enhancements to the training range. The Navy’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) acknowledges that these changes, particularly those related to its increased use of mid-frequency sonar, are likely to have measurable impacts on 32 protected marine mammal species known to inhabit the NWTRC…”

Congressman Thompson continues: “…As the Navy moves forward with plans to train on new weapons systems, it is essential that NOAA identifies the environmental impacts of these new aircraft, ships and submarines – and their accompanying mitigation measures – specifically with reference to the productive ocean habitats and species that define the Pacific Coast… I am not aware of any specific elements included in the evaluation and am concerned that the review will be inadequate to address the Navy’s EIS with respect to protection of Pacific Coast ocean ecosystems.

NOAA’s comprehensive review is particularly important given that the Navy has estimated shipboard visual monitoring for marine mammals – the most commonly employed sonar mitigation measure – to be effective only 9% of the time.

It is important that NOAA take immediate steps to validate its comprehensive review of mitigation measures. Specifically, I request that you provide my office with an outline of the comprehensive review process and answers to the following questions:

1. What mitigation measures will be reviewed during NOAA’s process?
2. What data will NOAA use to identify those mitigation measures best able to protect marine species?
3. How will your agency’s recommendations target specific species, habitats or training activities of concern?
4. How will NOAA’s recommendations address sonar impacts to species other than marine mammals?
5. How will NOAA or the Navy establish performance standards to ensure that recommended mitigation measures are functioning as intended?…”

The public should also be informed of any information received by Congressman Thompson’s office. In addition, there are a few more questions which need to be answered:

1. What are the synergistic and cumulative effects of all the permits that have been issued in the last two years to Naval Range Complex requests?

2. Bomb blasts and toxic chemicals are also being tested by the Navy and NOAA reviews are not including information on the Navy Hazardous Waste and Toxic Chemicals sections of the Navy E.I.S., such as bioaccumulation of chemicals in the food chain, death from exposure to toxic chemicals and bomb blasts.

3. The Navy will also be conducting classified future warfare testing. Since the public is not to be informed of those tests, chemicals being used, electromagnetic weapons systems, and other air or land based tests, who is protecting sea life, human health, water, soil, and air from pollution and other experimental tests?

4. Human health from airborne pollutants, toxic debris, and shoreline contamination from toxic chemicals should also be considered in the NMFS evaluation. The protection of cruise ships, fishermen, ocean tourists, U.S. Coastguard personnel, and the public who swim in the ocean should also be considered in their evaluations. This is not just a marine mammal issue.

It is now time for all of us to weigh in with regard to these warfare programs which will devastate our marine mammals, pollute our air and water, and have negative impacts on human health. We should have U.S. Congressional Hearings and a postponement of these programs until such time as the public can be informed about these issues.

The arms trade provides the destructive hardware used in conflicts across the world. It undermines development, contributing to the poverty and suffering of millions.

A new report by War on Want, Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks’ complicity in the arms trade has exposed, for the first time, the extent to which the five main British high street banks are funding this violent trade.

High street banks are using our money to fund companies that sell arms used against civilians in wars across the world, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are financing an industry that sells arms to countries committing human rights abuses such as Israel, Colombia and Saudi Arabia.

Money from our savings and current accounts is being used to fund companies that produce pernicious weapons like depleted uranium and cluster bombs.

As a result of the financial crisis there are now unprecedented calls for regulation of the banking sector.

War on Want is calling on the government to ensure that all banks are made to publish the full details of their loans, holdings and other banking services to the arms trade. The government must also introduce regulation which prevents high street banks from supporting the arms trade.

OSLO: Some 100 countries will ban the use of cluster bombs with the signing of a treaty Wednesday in Oslo but major producers such as China, Russia and the United States are shunning the pact.

The treaty, agreed upon in Dublin in May, outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions which primarily kill civilians.

“It’s only one of the very few times in history that an entire category of weapons has been banned,” said Thomas Nash of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC) umbrella group that comprises some 300 non-governmental organisations.

It’s unlikely now that you’re going to see large scale use of cluster bombs,” he said.

Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, cluster bombs explode in mid-air to randomly scatter hundreds of bomblets, which can be three inches (eight centimetres) in size.

Many cluster bomblets can fail to explode, often leaving poverty-stricken areas trying to recover from war littered with countless de-facto landmines.

According to Handicap International, about 100,000 people have been maimed or killed by cluster bombs around the world since 1965, 98 per cent of them civilians.

More than a quarter of the victims are children who mistake the bomblets for toys or tin cans.

“This is not about disarmament, this is not about arms control. This is a humanitarian issue,” said Annette Abelsen, a senior advisor at the foreign ministry in Norway which played a key role in hammering out the international agreement.

In Laos, the most affected country in the world, the US Air Force dropped 260 million cluster bombs between 1964 and 1973, or the equivalent of a fully-loaded B52 bomber’s cargo dropped every eight minutes for nine years.

Dispersed in fields and pastures, the weapons make it perilous to cultivate the land and can claim numerous lives for decades after the end of a conflict.

On Wednesday, France and Britain will be represented by their foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband. Japan, Canada, Germany and Australia will also sign the treaty.

But, as was the case with the Ottawa Convention that outlaws landmines, key countries such as the United States, Russia, China and Israel have objected to the ban and will not sign it because they are the biggest producers and users.

The election of Barack Obama as president may however bring about a change in the US position, activists hope.

“Obama has voted for, previously, a national regulation in the US for cluster ammunitions,” said Grethe Oestern, a policy advisor at the Norwegian People’s Aid organisation and a co-chair of the CMC.

“So that’s not just a theoretical possibility at all that we could see the US onboard this treaty sometime in the future,” she added.

In 2006, Obama voted in the US Senate to ban the use of cluster munitions in heavily populated areas, but in the end the motion was rejected.

The Oslo Convention is nonetheless expected to stigmatise the use of the weapon even by non-signatory countries, according to activists.

While the United States, Russia and China “seem to have an allergy to international law in general,” there are signs that “the stigma against this weapon is already working,” Nash said.

NATO’s decision not to use cluster bombs, including in Afghanistan, and the lightning-quick denial from Moscow when it was accused of using the munitions against Georgia in the August war shows that these countries also find the weapon “morally unacceptable,” Nash said.

“Even big countries like Russia don’t want to be associated in the media with having used cluster bombs.”

The European Parliament on Thursday urged European Union (EU) member states to sign and ratify the Convention of Cluster Munitions (CCM) as soon as possible and to take steps toward implementation even before it is signed and ratified.

The resolution was adopted with 471 votes in favor, 6 against and 21 abstentions in Strasbourg, France.

The European Parliament requests EU member states not to use, invest in, stockpile, produce, transfer or export cluster munitions even though the CCM has not entered into force.

EU member states which have used cluster munitions are called on to provide assistance to affected populations and to provide technical and financial assistance for the clearance and destruction of cluster munitions remnants.

The European Parliament urged the European Commission to increase financial assistance through all available instruments to communities and individuals affected by unexploded cluster munitions.

Cluster bombs scatter over a wide area when dropped from the air or used in artillery shells. Many do not explode and it is often children who pick them up, with devastating consequences.

The charity Handicap International estimates that 98 percent of the victims of cluster bombs are civilians, of whom 27 percent are children.

EU member states are also requested to refrain from taking action, which might circumvent or jeopardize the CCM and its provisions. In particular, the parliament called on all EU members not to adopt, endorse or subsequently ratify a possible Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Protocol allowing for the use of cluster munitions which would not be compatible with the CCM.

Cluster bomb survivor Ta with examples of the weapons that maimed him. Photo by Stanislas Fradelizi.

Xieng Khouang, Laos –

Imagine growing up in a country where the equivalent of a B52 planeload of cluster bombs was dropped every eight minutes for nine years. Then imagine seeing your children and grandchildren being killed and maimed by the same bombs, three decades after the war is over.

Welcome to Laos, a country with the unwanted claim to fame of being the most bombed nation per capita in the world. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions – also known as bombie in Laos.

To put this into perspective, this is more bombs than fell on Europe during World War Two.

The U.S. bombing was largely aimed at destroying enemy supply lines during the Vietnam war which passed through Laos. The war ended 35 years ago, yet the civilian casualties continue.

According to aid agency Handicap International, as many as 12,000 civilians have been killed or maimed since, and there are hundreds of new casualties every year.

Take Ta, a father of seven who lives in a remote village in Khammoune Province in southern Laos. One morning four years ago, he saw something that looked like a bombie. He knew it was dangerous, but he had also heard that the explosive inside could be used for catching fish, so he decided to touch it with a stick. That one small tap cost him both arms and an eye. Ta had to travel nine hours to get medical help. He sold his livestock to pay hospital bills, and when he ran out of things to sell, he went home.

Ta says he had to ‘eat like a dog’ for four years, before non-governmental organisation COPE provided him with prosthetic arms. Now he is able to help in small domestic chores.

When $50 is too much:

Then there is 31-year-old Yee Lee. He was digging around in his garden in August when suddenly his hoe came down hard on a bombie. He lost both legs and two fingers.

I met Lee at Xieng Khouang provincial hospital where he was having a moulding done for prosthetic legs. He was unsure and worried about what the future held. “I have five very young children, and my wife is six months pregnant,” he said. For now, his elderly parents and younger brother help his family. “I hope, with the prosthetic leg, to get back to work either in the field or around the house.”

Unfortunately, most survivors are unable to continue physical work, even if, like Lee, they receive free treatment and prosthetic limbs from agencies such as COPE and World Education . A prosthetic leg that can last up to two years costs as little as $50, yet in a country consistently ranked one of the region’s poorest and where almost 30 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day, this is more than most families can afford. Worse, loss of a breadwinner means loss of income and increased poverty.

Cluster bombs are dropped by planes or fired by mortars. They open mid-air releasing multiple explosive sub-munitions that scatter over a large area. These bomblets are usually the size of tennis balls.

Aid agencies say the indiscriminate nature of these weapons and the fact many bomblets fail to go off mean they have a devastating humanitarian impact.

On December 3 this year, over 100 nations will sign an international treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs.

Legacy of Vietnam War:

In Laos, it’s thought that around 30 percent of bombies failed to explode on impact, leaving about 80 million live munitions lying on or under the soil which has posed a serious threat to people’s lives and livelihood.

So far, fewer than 400,000 bombies have been cleared, a meagre 0.47 per cent. The United Nations estimates almost half of all cluster munition victims are from Laos.

Even with community awareness programmes run by national authority UXO Laos, with support from numerous aid agencies, the injuries and deaths continue. Sometimes people touch the bombies out of ignorance, other times it’s out of curiosity (children) or for economic reasons (adults).

With scrap metal going at $1 to $3 a kilogramme, some people collect war remnants to sell, and this includes unexploded ordnance.

In a private foundry on the outskirts of Phonsavanh, the capital of Xieng Khouang, the humanitarian organisation Mines Advisory Group (MAG) sorted through five years’ worth of scrap metal, and discovered over 24,000 live items, including 500 cluster munitions.

Xieng Khouang, in northern Laos, is one of the most affected areas – more than 500,000 tons of bombs were dropped here.

The mountainous and beautiful terrain is marred by craters of all sizes – locals liken it to the surface of the moon – and littered with metal shrapnel.

Children are at constant risk. In a small village school 20 minutes from the provincial capital, 248 bombies were found in a 4,200 sq metre area.

The province is also famous for the Plain of Jars – a vast plateau of ancient stone jars whose origins remain a mystery. But the amount of war debris scattered between the giant jars has seriously hampered archaeologists’ efforts to find out more about them.

David Hayter, country director of MAG, says the sad truth is that Laos will never be 100 percent rid of cluster bombs. “The priority is in clearing the land where people are living and working,” he said. “We are teaching them to learn to live safely within the environment. It’s a mixture of education and clearance.”

More than 100 nations have reached an agreement on a treaty which would ban current designs of cluster bombs. Diplomats meeting in Dublin agreed to back an international ban on the use of the controversial weapons following 10 days of talks. But some of the world’s main producers and stockpilers – including the US, Russia and China – oppose the move. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it a “big step forward to make the world a safer place”.

He announced earlier that Britain would be taking cluster bombs out of service. The final draft of the treaty went before delegates from a total of 109 countries on Wednesday afternoon.

How a Cluster Bomb Works (Source: Handicap International)

Cluster bombs are complex weapons. The following sequence explains its functioning and why bomblets cover a large area.

Step 1:The cluster bomb CBU-87 is dropped from a plane. It weighs about 430 kg and carries about 200 bomblets. This bomb can be dropped from a wide range of aircrafts from many different countries. The bomb can fly about 9 miles by itself before the bomblets are released.

Step 2: A short time before the bomblets are released the cluster bombs begin to spin. The canister opens at an altitude between 100m and 1000m. The height, velocity and rotation speed determine what area will be covered by the bomblets.

Step 3: Each bomblet is the size of a soft drink can. They deploy a little parachute that stabilizes them and makes sure that they descend with their nose down. Each of the bomblets holds hundreds of metal pieces, which can pierce armour.

Step 4: Depending on the altitude from which the bomblets were released and on the wind conditions, the bomblets can cover an area of up to 200m by 400 m. When the bomblets explode, they cause injury and damage across a wide area. The blast of one bomblet can cause deadly shrapnel injuries of in a radius of up to 25 metres.

This map shows the area of Trafalgar Square, London. It illustrates the radius of the bomblets. One cluster bomb could spread bomblets covering the red area. The green area shows the radius in which the bomblets could cause fatal injuries.

‘Bomblets’

Cluster bombs have been used in countries including Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon.They are made up of a big container which opens in mid-air, dropping hundreds of smaller individual sub-munitions, or “bomblets”, across a wide area.

November 21 200815 countries including Britain will miss their 2009 landmine clearance targets
Greece, Turkey and Belarus continue to violate an international treaty by not destroying their stock of landmines, according to a report that says more than 5,400 people were killed or maimed by landmines last year.

The Landmine Monitor Report released by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) says that 15 other countries including Britain will miss their 2009 clearance targets.

According to Stuart Casey-Maslen, editor of the Landmine Monitor, “It is not acceptable that [these] countries have failed to clear a single mined area in the last nine years and expect to be granted extensions,” he told reporters ahead of a meeting of the treaty’s 156 signatory states to be held in Geneva next week.

The ICBL report says that anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions and other ordnance can lie dormant for decades before exploding.

While trade in landmines is now virtually non-existent, many countries are moving too slowly to get rid of the crippling weapons, the 1,155-page report said.

The ICBL, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, said that while Denmark, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, Britain and Venezuela, are seeking more time to clear their mined areas, de-mining operations should have been finished by now.

But Britain has not even begun mine-sweeping in the Falkland Islands, where it fought a war with Argentina in 1982, while Venezuela has said it gains some benefit from mines that keep Colombian guerrillas off its territory, Casey-Maslen said.

Greece and Turkey have a combined stockpile of 4.2 million anti-personnel mines, and Belarus has 3.4 million yet to be destroyed under the Ottawa Convention, which regulates the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and monitors their destruction.

Government pledging to help victims, often shunned by friends, families and employers.

By Gloria Laker Aciro in Gulu (AR No. 193, 20-Nov-08)

Irene Laker said she’d had a restless night because her village near Gulu had just been attacked by members of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA.

In the morning, she walked out the back of her house. “As I moved, [there was] a big bang. I had stepped on a landmine the rebels had planted at night,” she said, recalling the incident in May 2001 that wrecked her life.

Laker was taken to the local Lacor Hospital, where her leg was amputated. After two months, she was fitted with an artificial limb donated by an Italian organisation.

Over the years, thousands of people in northern Uganda have either been maimed or killed by landmines and other forms of unexploded ordnance such as hand grenades and mortars.

Laker, now 29, said her life was devastated by her injury. The man she was set to marry called off the wedding when he saw her condition in hospital.

Then she said all her good friends deserted her and finally she lost her job.

“Before the accident, I had got a job as secretary in the office of the resident district commissioner. But when I reported for work one day, I was told to leave because I had become disabled,” she said.

Women have been particularly hard hit by the landmine problem, say experts, because they generally are the ones who gather firewood and cultivate gardens.

William Odong, a Gulu district councillor who represents people with disabilities, said women constitute 70 per cent of landmine cases in the north.

“The fact that … women are more engaged in agricultural work, collecting fire wood, and fetching water [puts] them [more] at risk of being hurt,” he told IWPR.

Women with amputated limbs are often shunned by family and friends.

“Most of the women who are victims of landmines have been abandoned by their husbands, who either marry another woman or send them away,” he said.

Small children are also victims of landmines, says Odong, because they accompany their mothers to collect firewood, work in gardens or go to fetch water.

He adds that landmine survivors can also face workplace discrimination because some jobs can’t be performed by the disabled, and some are disqualified simply because of discrimination against amputees.

“People see landmine survivors as a [undesirables] and try not to get close or give them support,” continued Odong. “Unless we move away from this kind of behaviour, the survivors will never be happy.”

Odong was also critical of demining operations which he said wait for people to report suspected landmines rather than go out searching for them.

He says it’s risky to have villagers look for landmines and other unexploded devices – something that should only be handled by experts.

Mark Livingstone, a landmine expert with a Danish de-mining group, said progress has been made to remove these hazards from northern Uganda during the past couple of years.

“We have deployed more men on the ground lately in smaller teams so that they can identify, respond and clear larger areas a lot faster,” he said.

“However, the main threat in northern Uganda is unexploded ordnance, [as] people move back to their villages and start to clear the ground for agriculture.”

More is being done to warn locals of the dangers of landmines and other unexploded devices, he says, through school programmes and local radio.

“We teach them that if they see an object like a landmine, they should mark the area … and quickly report [it], [so we can] move to verify and detonate,” he said.

But, said Livingston, the de-miners fear that in the next year more casualties are likely as people clear more land for cultivation.

Despite the setbacks, life has begun to improve for some landmine victims.

Laker, for example, joined the Gulu-Amuru Association of Landmine Survivors and now works with the organisation as a secretary, helping to set up support projects for victims.

One such project provides small solar panels to victims who live in villages where there is no electricity. The survivors earn money by using the panels to recharge mobile phone batteries.

Association coordinator Stephen Okello, who is also a landmine victim, said others are engaged in bricklaying, pig-raising and poultry projects.

In addition, homes are being built for some victims in Gulu and Amuru – and the first 15 are almost complete, says Okello.

More help may also be coming from the Ugandan government.

Gulu resident district commissioner Walter Ochora says documentation of victims of war who have lost limbs or been mutilated began last year.

“Victims of war including landmine survivors are faced with a number of challenges,” said Ochora. “They are categorised as persons with special needs, and soon all will be compensated by government of Uganda.”

The Ottawa Treaty (also known as the Convention On The Prohibition Of The Use, Stockpiling, Production And Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines And On Their Destruction) bans the use of anti-personnel mines around the world.

In 1992, Handicap International and five other NGOs, completely appalled by the suffering and the horrifying consequences of the use of anti-personnel mines on civilians, decided to create the InternationalCampaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). For Handicap International, the decision to take part in the creation of ICBL was motivated by the fact that our staff saw daily victims of landmines in countries such as Cambodia or Kosovo.

Three years later, in March 1995, Belgium became the first country to ban anti-personnel landmines. This brave move bya small country was the result of a fruitful cooperation between Handicap International and two visionary members of the Parliament.

By March 1997, 53 countries had announced their support for a total ban on landmines, 28 countries had renounced of suspended the use of mines, and 16 began destroying some of their stockpiles.

By September 16, 1998, the Treaty to Ban Landmines, which had been opened for signature in December 1997, had been ratified by the 40 countries required to make it a binding international convention. The treaty entered into force on 1st March 1999, faster than any international treaty in history. The Treaty:

prohibits the manufacture, trade and use of anti-personnel mines

obliges countries to destroy stockpiles within 4 years and clear their own territory within 10 years

urges governments to help poorer countries clear land and assist landmine victims

The Treaty to Ban Landmines has already had some tangible effects on the production and trade of landmines, even among countries that have not yet signed the treaty. By 1999, only 16 of the original 54 mine-producing countries continued to manufacture anti-personnel landmines or their components, and all traditional exporters of mines, except Iraq, have officially ceased their activities.

As of 20 March 2006, there are 154 signatories/accessions to the Treaty – more than two-thirds of the world’s nations. Those who have still not signed include the US, Russia, China, Pakistan, Finland and India.

A landmine victim every hour in the world

• Indiscriminate: landmines kill and maim civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers and aid workers alike. Landmines lie dormant in the ground and become a permanent threat to civilians in peacetime.

• Inhumane: It is estimated that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 new casualties every year. Many people die in the fields from lack of emergency care. Those who survive will most likely suffer from amputations, will face long hospital stays and require extensive rehabilitation. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or injured in the last decades.

• Development disaster: landmines deprive people in some of the poorest countries of land and infrastructure. Landmines also hold up the return of refugees and displaced people. They hamper reconstruction and the delivery of aid, whilst killing livestock and wrecking the environment.

• Landmines are everywhere: 84 countries and 8 territories are affected in the world. Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya and Iraq are some of the worst affected countries.

• Still work to be done: Landmines are still being planted today and minefields dating back decades continue to lie in wait of innocent victims. Over 10 countries are still producing landmines.

Barack Obama has run perhaps the best organized and most inspiring of presidential campaigns in US political history. He has risen above sleazy political tactics, challenged stereotypes, eschewed divisiveness, focused on issues that are important to Americans, and maintained his poise and principles in the face of tremendous pressure from his opponents. It has been truly awe-inspiring and admirable.

There is little wonder that almost 53% of American voters and perhaps a larger percentage of the world population have found themselves strongly attracted to Barack Obama. He has become a shining beacon of “hope” and “change” for a country in a crisis of self-confidence, and a world participating vicariously through the blown up “reality-TV” of American presidential elections.

Without taking anything away from the greatness of Obama’s achievement, and the historical importance of this event for American culture and identity, I feel constrained to point out that those who think an Obama presidency will improve the way that the United States has been engaging with the world may need to take a reality-check.

I say this as one who instinctively likes Barack Obama, has tremendous respect and admiration for him, shares with him the same alma mater, has close friends and relatives all across the United States, and has followed the campaign speeches, events and reporting on the US election with pathological interest.

I am addressing this article only to those who are already aware of the many ways in which the United States has been uniquely responsible for undermining international law, stability, peace and prosperity in the World. Those who are offended that I could even make such a suggestion should investigate elsewhere, and read no further.

The insight I share is a simple one: nothing that Barack Obama has done or promised gives rise to the “hope” that an Obama presidency will usher in the “change we need” in the world. The gloomy conclusion comes from asking a series of questions, and for each one recognizing the answer to be “no he won’t”:

Will president Obama allow the United States to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The ICC is the preeminent global mechanism for holding egregious human rights violators to account, when they are able to escape being held to account by national jurisdictions. It is a mechanism championed by Europe and enthusiastically adopted by much of the world, but almost fatally undermined by the United States formal renouncing in 2002, and keeping a clutch of countries that depend on US support away from it – Sri Lanka being amongst that number.

Will president Obama bring the United States into the Kyoto protocol or at least an equivalent and sufficient compact on responding to Global Warming? The United States with less than four percent of the global population is responsible for more a quarter of the annual emissions that cause global warming – by far the highest per-capita pollution rate. The negative consequences of Global warming will be borne disproportionately by the poor of the world who have benefited the least from the industrial activities over the last hundred years that have brought about the problem.

Will president Obama bring the United States back in to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia, or an acceptable equivalent? President George Bush in 2002 withdrew the US from the 1972 ABM treaty, because Russia could no longer compete in the arms race. This withdrawal from the treaty and subsequent plans for missile deployments in countries close to Russia has been the principal reason for souring relations with Moscow. It has begun a new version of the cold war, with attendant threats to the security of the world. (Georgia being the first bit of grass to get trampled as the Elephants position them-selves in the fight).

Will president Obama reverse the longstanding US policy of blindly supporting Israel as it continues to deny the people of Palestine a just return of their lands and the right to a dignified existence in their own territory? Israel routinely receives upwards of 2 billion dollars in military aid alone from the US each year (together with about another one billion in non-military aid, Israel receives one sixth of the US foreign aid budget each year), and at the U.N. Security Council the US routinely exercises its veto power in favour of Israel anytime the rest of the world tries to even voice their concern about the injustice. This unprincipled support has been the chief recruiting sergeant in the Middle East for Al Qaida-style organizations, which are undermining stability and peace in the world.

Will president Obama choke off the still strong political and military support by the US for the utterly corrupt, repressive, authoritarian Saudi Arabian regime? The Saudi regime is amongst the most corrupt and repressive in the world. That regime and US support for it remains the second most important driver of Al Qaida recruitment. It monopolises the massive wealth from oil revenues for the aggrandizement of a small circle of family, friends, and multinational oil companies, denying much of the local population even a semblance of fair share and perpetuates that injustice by repressive laws, restricted freedoms and denial of democracy.

Will president Obama after closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp (even McCain would) apologise and pay compensation to those who can’t be charged — the large number of innocent people yanked in there by mercenary schemes, tortured, and denied any semblance of justice for now almost 7 years? Guantanamo Bay prison has — in large screen technicolour, brazenly and shamelessly — flouted numerous international covenants on civil, political and human rights. Since it’s inception in January 2002, Guantanamo Bay prison has shown the middle finger to the universal values of civilised cultures and made these values seem cheap, subservient, and disposable when inconvenient. Such an iconic prison camp that ends with unrepentant impunity will have terribly undermined the power of these values to shape the world.

Will president Obama change the US position in 2001, when it became the only country to oppose the international UN treaty on curbing the flow of small arms? This treaty – spearheaded by Sri Lankan Jayantha Dhanapala, then under-secretary-general to Kofi Anan – aimed to provide some simple global standards and tracing methods to curtail the illicit flow of small arms in the world (much of them manufactured and sold by the US). These weapons expand the power of organized crime, fuel militia gangs, arm child soldiers (including those of the LTTE in Sri Lanka), and are estimated by the UN to kill at least half a million people each year.

Will president Obama withdraw US intransigence at World Trade talks (which have been failing to reach consensus since the Doha round in 2001)? The US (which together with the EU spends more than 100 billion dollars per year on farm subsidies) wants to continue denying farmers from poor countries the same access to the markets of very rich nations, as has been secured for multinationals from those countries into the markets of the poor? Even the global western institutions such as the IMF and World Bank admit openly that this lack of symmetry in trade access is one of the principle causes of poverty in the African continent, the poorest region of the world.

I have considered here only a few of the burning questions of the world. I think they highlight the bleakness of this grand “change” in America, in terms of having a positive effect on the way that American power is wielded in the world. With a George Bush presidency, there was at least no illusion about the selfish abuse of military and institutional power by the United States. An Obama presidency that continues these wolfish tendencies in sheep’s clothing will not make the world a better place.

The election of Barack Obama is shrouded in the illusion that US engagement in the world will now be moral and benevolent. But the time for that has not yet arrived, and is not likely to arrive until US economic and military power diminishes more significantly. For those who were listening, Barack Obama has in fact been threatening the world, by the trade, military and foreign policy positions that he has articulated consistently throughout his campaign – and there is no reason to think he didn’t mean what he said.

Has Barack Obama offered “hope” for Americans? Resoundingly “Yes!” But the hope that President Obama offers Americans is not hope for the world.

Can he eliminate the corruption in the American political system?
The American self serving agenda has seeped into every corner of the world. Whether is be Free Trade or the Financial Crisis. It has seeped into the IMF and World Bank. It has slithered into every aspect of the planet. Corporations are as corrupt as the MOB. They hold too much power over Governments and people.

Free Trade agreements, the IMF and World Bank help promote their agenda of cheap slave labour, massive profits and the ability to pollute world wide. They promote privatization of services such as water, education and health care. This all for profit and to the demise of the people. Oddly enough the because of the Financial Crisis many countries have had to borrow money from the IMF and World Bank and are now at the mercy of their dictatorial agenda.

They of course are apparently seen as the good guys helping out those poor countries in need, when in fact they are just as usual, promoting more privatization of their resources. How sweet it is to be in their grasp. Well for the corporations that is, not for the people of the country that had to borrow money. I bet their Cooperate mouths are just watering at the prospect of more profits, at the expense of the countries who were forced to turn to the IMF and World Banks.

Iceland had to raise their Interest rates to a whopping 18 percent, while the rest of the institutions are lowering them. That was one of the stipulations in the IMF loan, they will receive from the IMF. There is something fishy in that, isn’t there? Gorden Brown treating them as a terrorist is just way out there. There certainly is something rather strange about it all. One has to wonder what the true agenda is?

A few years back it was well known what was going on. Africa is one of the victims. A classic example of IMF and World Bank pretending to be nice.

Instead they have working toward World Domination via Military Dominance, Free Trade agreements, IMF and the World Bank. They have pandered to Corperate Greed and Profiteering. Which in the end causes more poverty, more pollution, more war, more corruption, more death, more cheap slave labour, more profiteering for the greedy and more hatred towards the United States of America.

NATO and the United Nations have done little to stop the Fascist Agenda. If anything they have enabled the US.

Should they end the Aid to Israel ? Well much of the aid is earmarked for weapons for one and it destabilizes the Middle East.

Can Obama sort through all of this and find ways to improve the life of US Citizens and the rest of the World?

Sure he could. It will take time and political will.

Will he and the Government of the US do anything is another story.

The rest of the world also needs to work with Obama to end the War Machine and Cooperate Corruption however.

The Enablers around the world, must also make it clear their agenda of World Domination must end.

Enough is Enough.

If the leaders in the World are to promote anything is should be to improve the lives of it’s citizens, not the profiteers and war mongers.

Cleaning up the media that sifts out “propaganda” to the American public would also go a long way to helping as well. The American people have the right to know the truth. So does the rest of the world.

The propaganda machine has worked it’s way into much of the media around the world as well.

The greenhouse gases released by the Iraq war thus far equals the pollution from adding 25 million cars to the road for one year says a study released by Oil Change International, an anti petroleum watchdog. The group’s main concerns are the environmental and human rights impacts of a petroleum based economy.

The study, released last March on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, states that total US spending on the war so far equals the global investment needed through 2030 to halt global warming.

Of course skeptics and oil companies will be right to ask how these numbers were calculated. The group claims Iraq war emissions estimates come from combat, oil well fires, increaesd gas flaring, increased cement manufacturing for reconstruction, and explosives.

“Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.” – 1992 Rio Declaration

The application of weapons, the destruction of structures and oil fields, fires, military transport movements and chemical spraying are all examples of the destroying impact war may have on the environment. Air, water and soil are polluted, man and animal are killed, and numerous health affects occur among those still living. This page is about the environmental effects of wars and incidents leading to war that have occurred in the 20th and 21st century.

Timeline of wars

Africa

“My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can’t deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars” – Guns ‘n Roses (Civil War)

In Africa many civil wars and wars between countries occurred in the past century, some of which are still continuing. Most wars are a result of the liberation of countries after decades of colonialization. Countries fight over artificial borders drawn by former colonial rulers. Wars mainly occur in densely populated regions, over the division of scarce resources such as fertile farmland. It is very hard to estimate the exact environmental impact of each of these wars. Here, a summary of some of the most striking environmental effects, including biodiversity loss, famine, sanitation problems at refugee camps and over fishing is given for different countries.

Congo war (II) – Since August 1998 a civil war is fought in former Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The war eventually ended in 2003 when a Transitional Government took power. A number of reasons are given for the conflict, including access and control of water resources and rich minerals and political agendas. Currently over 3 million people have died in the war, mostly from disease and starvation. More than 2 million people have become refugees. Only 45% of the people had access to safe drinking water. Many women were raped as a tool of intimidation, resulting in a rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV-AIDS. The war has a devastating effect on the environment. National parks housing endangered species are often affected for exploitation of minerals and other resources. Refugees hunt wildlife for bush meat, either to consume or sell it. Elephant populations in Africa have seriously declined as a result of ivory poaching. Farmers burn parts of the forest to apply as farmland, and corporate logging contributes to the access of poachers to bush meat. A survey by the WWF showed that the hippopotamus population in one national park decreased from 29,000 thirty years previously, to only 900 in 2005. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed all five parks as ‘world heritage in danger’.

Ethiopia & Eritrea – Before 1952, Eritrea was a colony of Italy. When it was liberated, Ethiopia annexed the country. Thirty years of war over the liberation of Eritrea followed, starting in 1961 and eventually ending with the independence of Eritrea in 1993. However, war commenced a year after the country introduced its own currency in 1997. Over a minor border dispute, differences in ethnicity and economic progress, Ethiopia again attacked Eritrea. The war lasted until June 2000 and resulted in the death of over 150,000 Eritrean, and of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. During the war severe drought resulted in famine, particularly because most government funds were spend on weapons and other war instrumentation. The government estimated that after the war only 60% of the country received adequate food supplies. The war resulted in over 750,000 refugees. It basically destroyed the entire infrastructure. Efforts to disrupt agricultural production in Eritrea resulted in changes in habitat. The placing of landmines has caused farming or herding to be very dangerous in most parts of the country. If floods occur landmines may be washed into cities. This has occurred earlier in Mozambique.

Rwanda civil war – Between April and July 1994 extremist military Hutu groups murdered about 80,000-1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Over 2,000,000 people lost their homes and became refugees. Rwanda has a very rich environment, however, it has a particularly limited resource base. About 95% of the population lives on the countryside and relies on agriculture. Some scientists believe that competition for scarce land and resources led to violence prior to and particularly after the 1994 genocide. It is however stated that resource scarcity only contributed limitedly to the conflict under discussion. The main cause of the genocide was the death of the president from a plane-crash caused by missiles fires from a camp.

The many refugees from the 1994 combat caused a biodiversity problem. When they returned to the already overpopulated country after the war, they inhabited forest reserves in the mountains where endangered gorillas lived. Conservation of gorilla populations was no longer effective, and refuges destroyed part of the habitat. Despite the difficulties still present in Rwanda particularly concerning security and resource provision, an international gorilla protection group is now working on better conditions for the gorillas in Rwanda.

Somalia civil war – A civil war was fought in Somalia 1991. One of the most striking effects of the war was over fishing. The International Red Cross was encouraging the consumption of seawater fish to improve diets of civilians. For self-sufficiency they provided training and fishing equipment. However, as a consequence of war Somali people ignored international fishing protocols, thereby seriously harming ecology in the region. Fishing soon became an unsustainable practise, and fishermen are hard to stop because they started carrying arms. They perceive over fishing as a property right and can therefore hardly be stopped.

Sudan (Darfur & Chad) – In Sudan civil war and extreme droughts caused a widespread famine, beginning in 1983. Productive farmland in the southern region was abandoned during the war. Thousands of people became refugees that left behind their land, possibly never to return. Attempts of remaining farmers to cultivate new land to grow crops despite the drought led to desertification and soil erosion. The government failed to act for fear of losing its administrative image abroad, causing the famine to kill an estimated 95,000 of the total 3,1 million residents of the province Darfur. As farmers started claiming more and more land, routes applied by herders were closed off. This resulted in conflicts between farmers and rebels groups. In 2003, a conflict was fought in Darfur between Arab Sudanese farmers and non-Arab Muslims. The Muslim group is called Janjaweed, a tribe mainly consisting of nomadic sheep and cattle herders. Originally the Janjaweed were part of the Sudanese and Darfurian militia, and were armed by the Sudanese government to counter rebellion. However, they started utilizing the weapons against non-Muslim civilians. The tribe became notorious for massacre in 2003-2004. In December 2005 the conflict continued across the border, now involving governmental army troops from Chad, and the rebel groups Janjaweed and United Front for Democratic Change from Sudan. In February 2006 the governments of Chad and Sudan signed a peace treaty called the Tripoli Agreement. Unfortunately a new rebel assault of the capital of Chad in April made Chad break all ties with Sudan. The Darfur Conflict so far caused the death of between 50,000 and 450,000 civilians. It caused over 45,000 people to flea the countries of Sudan and Central Africa, into north and east Chad. Most refugees claim they fled civilian attacks from rebel forces, looting food and recruiting young men to join their troops.

America

Pearl Harbor (WWII) – When World War II began, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Consequentially, the United States closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, and initiated a complete oil embargo. Japan, being dependent on US oil, responded to the embargo violently. On December 1941, Japanese troops carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, aimed at the US Navy stationed there. Despite the awareness that Japan might attack, the US was surprisingly unprepared for the Japanese aggression. There were no aircraft patrols, and anti-aircraft weapons were not manned.

For the attack five Japanese submarines were present in the harbor to launch torpedos. One was discovered immediately, and attacked by the USS Ward. All five submarines sank, and at least three of them have not been located since. As Japanese bombers arrived they began firing at US marine airbases across Hawaii, and subsequently battle ships in Pearl Harbor. Eighteen ships sank, including five battleships, and a total of more than 2,000 Americans were killed in action. The explosion of the USS Arizona caused half of the casualties. The ship was hit by a bomb, burned for two days in a row, and subsequently sank to the bottom. The cloud of black smoke over the boat was mainly caused by burning black powder from the magazine for aircraft catapults aboard the ship.

Leaking fuel from the Arizona and other ships caught fire, and caused more ships to catch fire. Of the 350 Japanese planes taking part in the attack, 29 were lost. Over sixty Japanese were killed in actions, most of them airmen.

Today, three battle ships are still at the bottom of the harbor. Four others were raised and reused. The USS Arizona, being the most heavily damaged ship during the attack, continues to leak oil from the hulk into the harbor. However, the wreck is maintained, because it now serves as part of a war memorial.

World Trade Centre explosion – The so-called ‘War on Terrorism’ the United States are fighting in Asia currently all started with the event we recall so well from the shocking images projected on news bulletins. On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew airplanes into the buildings of the World Trade Centre. It is now claimed that the attack and simultaneous collapse of the Twin Towers caused a serious and acute environmental disaster.

“We will live in the death smog for a while,
breathing the dust of the dead,
the 3 thousand or so who turn to smoke,
as the giant ashtray in Lower Manhattan
continues to give up ghosts.
The dead are in us now,
locked in our chests,
staining our lungs,
polluting our bloodstreams.
And though we cover our faces with flags
and other pieces of cloth to filter the air,
the spirits of the dead aren’t fooled
by our masks.” Lawrence Swan, 05-10-2001

As the planes hit the Twin Towers more than 90.000 litres of jet fuel burned at temperatures above 1000oC. An atmospheric plume formed, consisting of toxic materials such as metals, furans, asbestos, dioxins, PAH, PCB and hydrochloric acid. Most of the materials were fibres from the structure of the building. Asbestos levels ranged from 0.8-3.0% of the total mass. PAH comprised more than 0.1% of the total mass, and PCBs less than 0.001% of total mass. At the site now called Ground Zero, a large pile of smoking rubble burned intermittently for more than 3 months. Gaseous and particulate particles kept forming long after the towers had collapsed.

Aerial photograph of the plume

The day of the attacks dust particles of various sizes spread over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, for many miles. Fire fighters and medics working at the WTC were exposed, but also men and women on the streets and in nearby buildings, and children in nearby schools. In vivo inhalation studies and epidemiological studies pointed out the impact of the dust cloud. Health effects from inhaling dust included bronchial hyper reactivity, because of the high alkalinity of dust particles. Other possible health effects include coughs, an increased risk of asthma and a two-fold increase in the number of small-for-gestational-age baby’s among pregnant women present in or nearby the Twin Towers at the time of the attack. After September, airborne pollutant concentrations in nearby communities declined.

Many people present at the WTC at the time of the attacks are still checked regularly, because long-term effects may eventually show. It is thought there may be an increased risk of development of mesothelioma, consequential to exposure to asbestos. This is a disease where malignant cells develop in the protective cover of the body’s organs. Airborne dioxins in the days and weeks after the attack may increase the risk of cancer and diabetes. Infants of women that were pregnant on September 11 and had been in the vicinity of the WTC at the time of the attack are also checked for growth or developmental problems.

Asia

Afghanistan war – In October 2001, the United States attacked Afghanistan as a starting chapter of the ‘War on terrorism’, which still continues today. The ultimate goal was to replace the Taliban government, and to find apparent 9/11 mastermind and Al-Qaeda member Osama Bin Laden. Many European countries assisted the US in what was called ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.

During the war, extensive damage was done to the environment, and many people suffered health effects from weapons applied to destroy enemy targets. It is estimated that ten thousand villages, and their surrounding environments were destroyed. Safe drinking water declined, because of a destruction of water infrastructure and resulting leaks, bacterial contamination and water theft. Rivers and groundwater were contaminated by poorly constructed landfills located near the sources.

Afghanistan once consisted of major forests watered by monsoons. During the war, Taliban members illegally trading timber in Pakistan destroyed much of the forest cover. US bombings and refugees in need of firewood destroyed much of what remained. Less than 2% of the country still contains a forest cover today.

Bombs threaten much of the country’s wildlife. One the world’s important migratory thoroughfare leads through Afghanistan. The number of birds now flying this route has dropped by 85%. In the mountains many large animals such as leopards found refuge, but much of the habitat is applied as refuge for military forces now. Additionally, refugees capture leopards and other large animals are and trade them for safe passage across the border.

Pollution from application of explosives entered air, soil and water. One example is cyclonite, a toxic substance that may cause cancer. Rocket propellants deposited perchlorates, which damage the thyroid gland. Numerous landmines left behind in Afghan soils still cause the deaths of men, women and children today.

Cambodia civil war – In 1966 the Prince of Cambodia began to lose the faith of many for failure to come to grips with the deteriorating economic situation. In 1967 rebellion started in a wealthy province where many large landowners lives. Villagers began attacking the tax collection brigade, because taxes were invested in building large factories, causing land to be taken. This led to a bloody civil war. Before the conflict could be repressed 10,000 people had died.

The rebellion caused the up rise of the Khmer Rouge, a Maoist-extremist organization that wanted to introduce communism in the country. In 1975 the organization, led by Pol Pot, officially seized power in Cambodia. The Khmer considered farmers (proletarians) to be the working class, as did Mao in China earlier. Schools, hospitals and banks were closed, the country was isolated from all foreign influence, and people were moved to the countryside for forced labor. People were obligated to work up to 12 hours a day, growing three times as many crops, as was usually the case. Many people died there from exhaustion, illness and starvation, or where shot by the Khmer on what was known as ‘The Killing Fields’.

The Khmer Rouge regime resulted in deforestation, caused by extensive timber logging to finance war efforts, agricultural clearance, construction, logging concessions and collection of wood fuels. A total 35% of the Cambodian forest cover was lost under the Maoist regime. Deforestation resulted in severe floods, damaging rice crops and causing food shortages. In 1993, a ban on logging exports was introduced to prevent further flooding damage.

In 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime ended with an invasion by Vietnam, and the installation of a pro-Vietnamese puppet government. Subsequently, Thai and Chinese forces attempted to liberate the country from Vietnamese dominance. Many landmines were placed in the 1980’s, and are still present in the countryside. They deny agricultural use of the land where they are placed. In 1992 free elections were introduced, but the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting. Eventually, half of the Khmer soldiers left in 1996, and many officials were captured. Under the Khmer regime, a total of 1.7 million people died, and the Khmer was directly responsible for about 750,000 of those casualties.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki nuclear explosions – Atomic bombs are based on the principle of nuclear fission, which was discovered in Nazi Germany in 1938 by two radio chemists. During the process, atoms are split and energy is released in the form of heat. Controlled reactions are applied in nuclear power plants for production of electricity, whereas unchecked reactions occur during nuclear bombings. The invention in Germany alarmed people in the United States, because the Nazi’s in possession of atomics bombs would be much more dangerous than they already where. When America became involved in WWII, the development of atomic bombs started there in what was called the ‘Manhattan Project’. In July 1945 an atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert. The tests were considered a success, and America was now in possession of one of the world’s deadliest weapons.

In 1945, at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, nuclear weapons were applied to kill for the first time in Japan. On August 6, a uranium bomb by the name of Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, followed by a plutonium bomb by the name of Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9. The reason Hiroshima was picked was that it was a major military centre. The bomb detonated at 8.15 p.m. over a Japanese Army parade field, where soldiers were already present. Nagasaki was picked because it was an industrial centre. The bomb, which was much larger than that used on Hiroshima, exploded at 11.02 a.m. at an industrial site. However, the hills on and the geographical location of the bombing site caused the eventual impact to be smaller than days earlier in Hiroshima.

The first impact of the atomic bombings was a blinding light, accompanied by a giant wave of heat. Dry flammable materials caught fire, and all men and animals within half a mile from the explosion sites died instantly. Many structures collapsed, in Nagasaki even the structures designed to survive earthquakes were blasted away. Many water lines broke. Fires could not be extinguished because of the water shortage, and six weeks after the blast the city still suffered from a lack of water. In Hiroshima a number of small fires combined with wind formed a firestorm, killing those who did not die before but were left immobile for some reason. Within days after the blasts, radiation sickness started rearing its ugly head, and many more people would die from it within the next 5 years.

The total estimated death toll:
In Hiroshima 100,000 were killed instantly, and between 100,000 and 200,000 died eventually.
In Nagasaki about 40,000 were killed instantly, and between 70,000 and 150,000 died eventually.

The events of August 6 and August 9 can be translated into environmental effects more literally. The blasts caused air pollution from dust particles and radioactive debris flying around, and from the fires burning everywhere. Many plants and animals were killed in the blast, or died moments to months later from radioactive precipitation. Radioactive sand clogged wells used for drinking water winning, thereby causing a drinking water problem that could not easily be solved. Surface water sources were polluted, particularly by radioactive waste. Agricultural production was damaged; dead stalks of rice could be found up to seven miles from ground zero. In Hiroshima the impact of the bombing was noticeable within a 10 km radius around the city, and in Nagasaki within a 1 km radius.

Iraq & Kuwait – The Gulf War was fought between Iraq, Kuwait and a number of western countries in 1991. Kuwait had been part of Iraq in the past, but was liberated by British imperialism, as the Iraqi government described it. In August 1990, Iraqi forces claimed that the country was illegally extracting oil from Iraqi territory, and attacked. The United Nations attempted to liberate Kuwait. Starting January 1991, Operation Desert Storm began, with the purpose of destroying Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft facilities, and command and control facilities. The battle was fought in Iraq, Kuwait and the Saudi-Arabian border region. Both aerial and ground artillery was applied. Late January, Iraqi aircraft were flown to Iran, and Iraqi forces began to flee.

The Gulf War was one of the most environmentally devastating wars ever fought. Iraq dumped approximately one million tons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, thereby causing the largest oil spill in history (see environmental disasters). Approximately 25,000 migratory birds were killed. The impact on marine life was not as severe as expected, because warm water sped up the natural breakdown of oil. Local prawn fisheries did experience problems after the war. Crude oil was also spilled into the desert, forming oil lakes covering 50 square kilometres. In due time the oil percolated into groundwater aquifers.

Fleeing Iraqi troops ignited Kuwaiti oil sources, releasing half a ton of air pollutants into the atmosphere. Environmental problems caused by the oil fires include smog formation and acid rain. Toxic fumes originating from the burning oil wells compromised human health, and threatened wildlife. A soot layer was deposited on the desert, covering plants, and thereby preventing them from breathing. Seawater was applied to extinguish the oil fires, resulting in increased salinity in areas close to oil wells. It took about nine months to extinguish the fires.

During the war, many dams and sewage water treatment plants were targeted and destroyed. A lack of possibilities for water treatment resulting from the attacks caused sewage to flow directly into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Additionally, pollutants seeped from bombed chemical plants into the rivers. Drinking water extracted from the river was polluted, resulting in widespread disease. For example, cases of typhoid fever have increased tenfold since 1991.

Movement of heavy machinery such as tanks through the desert damaged the brittle surface, causing soil erosion. Sand was uncovered that formed gradually moving sand dunes. These dunes may one day cause problems for Kuwait City. Tanks fired Depleted Uranium (DU) missiles, which can puncture heavy artillery structures. DU is a heavy metal that causes kidney damage and is suspected to be teratogenic and carcinogenic. Post-Gulf War reports state an increase in birth defects for children born to veterans. The impact of Depleted Uranium could not be thoroughly investigated after the Gulf War, because Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate. Its true properties were revealed after the Kosovo War in 2001 (description below). DU has now been identified as a neurotoxin, and birth defects and cancers are attributed to other chemical and nerve agents. However, it is stated that DU oxides deposited in the lungs of veterans have not been thoroughly researched yet. It was later found that this may cause kidney and lung infections for highly exposed persons.

After the Gulf War many veterans suffered from a condition now known as the Gulf War Syndrome. The causes of the illness are subject to widespread speculation. Examples of possible causes are exposure to DU (see above), chemical weapons (nerve gas and mustard gas), an anthrax vaccine given to 41% of US soldiers and 60-75% of UK soldiers, smoke from burning oil wells and parasites. Symptoms of the GWS included chronic fatigue, muscle problems, diarrhoea, migraine, memory loss, skin problems and shortness of breath. Many Gulf War veterans have died of illnesses such as brain cancer, now acknowledged as potentially connected to service during the war.

Iraq & the United States – The war in Iraq started by the United States in 2003 as part of the War on Terrorism causes poverty, resulting in environmental problems. Long-term environmental effects of the war remain unclear, but short-term problems have been identified for every environmental compartment. For example, some weapons are applied that may be extremely damaging to the environment, such as white phosphorus ammunition. People around the world protest the application of such armoury.

WaterDamage to sanitation structures by frequent bombing, and damage to sewage treatment systems by power blackouts cause pollution of the River Tigris. Two hundred blue plastic containers containing uranium were stolen from a nuclear power plant located south of Baghdad. The radioactive content of the barrels was dumped in rivers and the barrels were rinsed out. Poor people applied the containers as storage facility for water, oil and tomatoes, or sold them to others. Milk was transported to other regions in the barrels, making it almost impossible to relocate them.

Air
Oil trenches are burning, as was the case in the Gulf War of 1991, resulting in air pollution. In Northern Iraq, a sulphur plant burned for one month, contributing to air pollution. As fires continue burning, groundwater applied as a drinking water source may be polluted.

Soil
Military movements and weapon application result in land degradation. The destruction of military and industrial machinery releases heavy metals and other harmful substances.

Israel & Lebanon – In July 2006, Hezbollah initiated a rocket attack on Israeli borders. A ground patrol killed and captured Israeli soldiers. This resulted in open war between Israel and Lebanon.

The war caused environmental problems as Israelis bombed a power station south of Beirut. Damaged storage tanks leaked an estimated 20,000 tons of oil into the Mediterranean Sea. The oil spill spread rapidly, covering over 90 km of the coastline, killing fish and affecting the habitat of the endangered green sea turtle. A sludge layer covers Beaches across Lebanon, and the same problem may occur in Syria as the spill continues to spread. Part of the oil spill burned, causing widespread air pollution. Smog affects the health of people living in the city of Beirut. So far problems limiting the clean-up operation of oil spills have occurred, because of ongoing violence in the region.

Another major problem were forest fires in Northern Israel caused by Hezbollah bombings. A total of 9,000 acres of forest burned to the ground, and fires threaten tree reserves and bird sanctuaries.

Russia & Chechnya – In 1994 the First Chechen War of independence started, between Russian troops, Chechen guerrilla fighters and civilians. Chechnya has been a province of Russia for a very long time and now desires independence. The First War ended in 1996, but in 1999 Russia again attacked Chechnya for purposes of oil distribution.

The war between the country and its province continues today. It has devastating effects on the region of Chechnya. An estimated 30% of Chechen territory is contaminated, and 40% of the territory does not meet environmental standards for life. Major environmental problems include radioactive waste and radiation, oil leaks into the ground from bombarded plants and refineries, and pollution of soil and surface water. Russia has buried radioactive waste in Chechnya. Radiation at some sites is ten times its normal level. Radiation risks increase as Russia bombs the locations, particularly because after 1999 the severeness of weaponry increased. A major part of agricultural land is polluted to the extent that it can no longer meet food supplies. This was mainly caused by unprofessional mini-refineries of oil poachers in their backyards, not meeting official standards and causing over 50% of the product to be lost as waste. Groundwater pollution flows into the rivers Sunzha and Terek on a daily basis. On some locations the rivers are totally devoid of fish. Flora and fauna are destroyed by oil leaks and bombings.

Vietnam war – The Vietnam War started in 1945 and ended in 1975. It is now entitled a proxy war, fought during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent the necessity for the nations to fight each other directly. North Vietnam fought side by side with the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam with the United States, New Zealand and South Korea. It must be noted that the United States only started to be actively involved in the battle after 1963. Between 1965 and 1968 North Vietnam was bombed under Operation Rolling Thunder, in order to force the enemy to negotiate. Bombs destroyed over two million acres of land. North Vietnam forces began to strike back, and the Soviet Union delivered anti-aircraft missiles to North Vietnam. The ground war of US troops against the Viet Cong began. The United States would not retreat from Vietnam until 1973, and during those years extremely environmentally damaging weapons and war tactics were applied.

A massive herbicidal programme was carried out, in order to break the forest cover sheltering Viet Cong guerrillas, and deprive Vietnamese peasants of food. The spraying destroyed 14% of Vietnam’s forests, diminished agricultural yield, and made seeds unfit for replanting. If agricultural yield was not damaged by herbicides, it was often lost because military on the ground set fire to haystacks, and soaked land with aviation fuel en burned it. A total of 15,000 square kilometres of land were eventually destroyed. Livestock was often shot, to deprive peasant of their entire food supply. A total of 13,000 livestock were killed during the war.

The application of 72 million litres of chemical spray resulted in the death of many animals, and caused health effects with humans. One chemical that was applied between 1962 and 1971, called Agent Orange, was particularly harmful. Its main constituent is dioxin, which was present in soil, water and vegetation during and after the war. Dioxin is carcinogenic and teratogenic, and has resulted in spontaneous abortions, chloracne, skin and lung cancers, lower intelligence and emotional problems among children. Children fathered by men exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War often have congenital abnormalities. An estimated half a million children were born with dioxin-related abnormalities. Agent Orange continues to threaten the health of the Vietnamese today.

“Drafted to go to Vietnam
To fight communism in a foreign land.
To preserve democracy is my plight
Which is a God…Given…Right.
Greenery so thick with hidden enemies
Agent Orange is sprayed on the trees.
Covering me from head to toe
Irate my eyes, burns through my clothes.
Returned home when my tour was done
To be told “You have cancer, son”.
Agent Orange is to blame
Government caused your suffering and pain.
Fight for compensation is frustrating and slow
Brass cover-up, not wanting anyone to know.
From cancer many comrades have died
Medical Insurance have been denied.
Compensation I now receive
My health I hope to retrieve.
In Vietnam , I was spared my life
Just to be stabbed with an Agent Orange knife” Yvonne Legge, 2001

Today, agriculture in Vietnam continues to suffer problems from six million unexploded bombs still present. Several organisations are attempting to remove these bombs. Landmines left in Vietnam are not removed, because the Vietnamese government refuses to accept responsibility.

Europe

Kosovo war – The Kosovo war can be divided up in two separate parts: a conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, and a conflict between Kosovo and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The first conflict originated in 1996 from the statement of Slobodan Milocevic that Kosovo was to remain a part of Serbia, and from the resulting violent response of Albanian residents. When Serbian troops slaughtered 45 Albanians in the village of Racak in Kosovo in 1999, the NATO intervened. NATO launched a 4-month bombing campaign upon Serbia as a reply to the massacre at Racak.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) investigated the environmental impact of the Kosovo war. It was concluded that the war did not result in an environmental disaster affecting the entire Balkan region. Nevertheless, some environmental hot spots were identified, namely Belgrade, Pancevo, Kragujevac, Novi Sad and Bor.

Bombings carried out by the United States resulted in leakages in oil refineries and oil storage depots. Industrial sites containing other industries were also targeted. EDC (1,2-dichloroethane), PCBs en mercury escaped to the environment. Burning of Vinyl Chloride Monomer (VCM) resulted in the formation of dioxin, hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide and PAHs, and oil burning released sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead and PAHs into the air. Heavy clouds of black smoke forming over burning industrial targets caused black rain to fall on the area around Pancevo. Some damage was done to National Parks in Serbia by bombings, and therefore to biodiversity. EDC, mercury and petroleum products (e.g. PCBs) polluted the Danube River. These are present in the sediments and may resurface in due time. EDC is toxic to both terrestrial and aquatic life. Mercury may be converted into methyl mercury, which is very toxic and bio accumulates. As a measure to prevent the consequences of bombing, a fertilizer plant in Pancevo released liquid ammonia into the Danube River. This caused fish kills up to 30 kilometres downstream.

In 1999 when NATO bombed Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, the resulting environmental damage was enormous. Petrochemical plants in suburbs started leaking all kinds of hazardous chemicals into air, water and soil. Factories producing ammonia and plastics released chlorine, hydrochloric acid, vinyl chloride and other chlorine substances, resulting in local air pollution and health problems. Water sources were polluted by oil leaking from refineries. The Danube River was polluted by oil more severely, but this time hydrochloric acid and mercury compounds also ended up there. These remained in the water for a considering period of time and consequently ended up in neighbouring countries Rumania and Bulgaria.

Clean drinking water supplies and waste treatment plants were damaged by NATO bombings. Many people fled their houses and were moved to refugee camps, where the number of people grew rapidly. A lack of clean drinking water and sanitation problems occurred.

Like in the Gulf War, Depleted Uranium (DU) was applied in the Kosovo War to puncture tanks and other artillery. After the war, the United Kingdom assisted in the removal of DU residues from the environment. Veterans complained of health effects. It was acknowledged by the UK and the US that dusts from DU can be dangerous if inhaled. Inhalation of dust most likely results in chemical poisoning.

World War I: Trench Warfare – In 1914, the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary resulted in the First World War, otherwise known as The Great War, or WWI. It started with Austria-Hungary invading Serbia, where the assassin came from, and Germany invading Belgium. The war was mostly in Europe, between the Allies and the Central Powers.

The war was fought from trenches, dug from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. In 1918 when the war was over, empires disintegrated into smaller countries, marking the division of Europe today. Over 9 million people had died, most of which perished from influenza after the outbreak of the Spanish Flu (see environmental disasters). The war did not directly cause the influenza outbreak, but it was amplified. Mass movement of troops and close quarters caused the Spanish Flu to spread quickly. Furthermore, stresses of war may have increased the susceptibility of soldiers to the disease.

In terms of environmental impact, World War I was most damaging, because of landscape changes caused by trench warfare. Digging trenches caused trampling of grassland, crushing of plants and animals, and churning of soil. Erosion resulted from forest logging to expand the network of trenches. Soil structures were altered severely, and if the war was never fought, in all likelihood the landscape would have looked very differently today.

Another damaging impact was the application of poison gas. Gases were spread throughout the trenches to kill soldiers of the opposite front. Examples of gases applied during WWI are tear gas (aerosols causing eye irritation), mustard gas (cell toxic gas causing blistering and bleeding), and carbonyl chloride (carcinogenic gas). The gases caused a total of 100,000 deaths, most caused by carbonyl chloride (phosgene). Battlefields were polluted, and most of the gas evaporates into the atmosphere. After the war, unexploded ammunition caused major problems in former battle areas. Environmental legislation prohibits detonation or dumping chemical weapons at sea, therefore the cleanup was and still remains a costly operation. In 1925, most WWI participants signed a treaty banning the application of gaseous chemical weapons. Chemical disarmament plants are planned in France and Belgium.

World War II: – World War II was a worldwide conflict, fought between the Allies (Britain, France and the United States as its core countries) and the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy and Japan as its core countries). It started with the German invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939, and ended with the liberation of Western Europe by the allies in 1945.

Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.

World War II: Hunger winter – In late 1944, the allied troops attempted to liberate Western Europe. As they reached The Netherlands, German resistance caused the liberation to be halted in Arnhem, as allied troops failed to occupy a bridge over the River Rhine. As the Dutch government in exile in Britain called for railway strikes, the Germans responded by putting embargo on food transport to the west. This resulted in what is now known as the Hunger Winter, causing an estimated 20,000-25,000 Dutch to starve to death. A number of factors caused the starvation: a harsh winter, fuel shortages, the ruin of agricultural land by bombings, floods, and the food transport embargo. Most people in the west lived off tulip bulbs and sugar beet. Official food rations were below 1000 cal per person per day. In May 1945 the Hunger Winter ended with the official liberation of the west of The Netherlands.

The there is this. So what do they do with weapons of mass destruction? Coming to an Ocean Near YOU! The cost in dollars for the pollution caused by war is staggering. The cost to human life is horrendous. The price of war to the Environment is deadly. This is of course a Global problem. What you don’t see can hurt you. If you don’t know it is only because they don’t want you too. They will never tell you the true unless we as a Global community force them to. This will affect our children for many years to come. War is probably one of the worst polluters on the planet. Stoppingthe WAR MACHINE is in everyone’s best interest.

Here you find tons of weapons that were dumped into the oceans among other things.

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” – Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as “spectacular … and a matter of concern.”

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems – radiation, chemical and particulate – the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.

In simple words, DU “trashes the body.” When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: “I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.They brought it home

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans. How did they hide it?

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry’s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up – just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public – of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon “and nothing overseas … nothing political.”

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The “next DU war” had already been planned, and those planning it wanted “no skunk at the garden party.”The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, “The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire,” details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU “show on the road” and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their “godfather” and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a “war against terrorism” long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby’s neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia – just coincidentally the areas where most of the world’s oil deposits are located – he replied: “It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.”

In Zbignew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy.”

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence … for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.

Many people – innocent civilians especially children, military veterans, industry workers – have illnesses and medical problems, which may be due to their exposure to ‘depleted’ uranium. In areas such as southern Iraq, where uranium munitions were used by the US and the UK, there have been reports of increases in cancers, leukemia and birth defects.

At least 18 countries possess these weapons, the use of which is contrary to existing humanitarian law.

We, the people, need to let governments and the United Nations know that these weapons can have no part in a humane and caring world. Every signature counts!

The Fourth International Day of Action: 4th – 6th November 2005
November 6th has been set by theUN as the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. ICBUW is therefore asking all groups and individuals to organise actions to ban uranium weapons. Just having a small-scale study meeting or doing a one-person petition on the street will contribute a lot to gathering momentum for the international campaign. So please join us!

There are planned events in Glasgow, Manchester and London, if you’d like to organise something in your own area, or join in with one of the three events mentioned already, please get in touch.

CADU have a wide range of campaign resouces available – posters, leaflets and information packs, contact us for bulk purchases on the cheap..

You really have to watch these. Radiation impairs your intelligence. Among other things. Connecting the Dots is a wealth of information.
6 video series on Du, Nuclear, and Gulf War Syndrome.
The Planet cannot sustain this type of pollution any longer. They go on for an eternity that cigarettes cause cancer. Well Radiation causes a whole lot more. The wind blows and it goes. There is a cancer epidemic on the planet and this is the major cause along with pesticides and other assorted things. But this is truly one of the worst. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it and it is around you every day because it doesn’t go away.

POISON DUST tells the story of young soldiers who thought they came home safely from the war, but didn’t. Of a veteran’s young daughter … all » whose birth defect is strikingly similar to birth defects suffered by many Iraqi children. Of thousands of young vets who are suffering from the symptoms of uranium poisoning, and the thousands more who are likely to find themselves with these ailments in the years to come. Of a government unwilling to admit there might be a problem here. Filmmaker Sue Harris skillfully weaves the stories of these young veterans with scientific explanations of the nature of “DU” and its dangers, including interviews with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, New York Daily News reporter Juan Gonzalez, noted physicist Michio Kaku, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Helen Caldicott and Major Doug Rokke- the former U.S. Army DU Project head.

Every American who cares about our troops should watch this film. Everyone who cares about the innocent civilians who live in the countries where these weapons are used should watch this film. And everyone who cares about the hatred of Americans that may result from the effects of our government’s actions in using these weapons, should watch this film. Is there a cover-up?

They also use their military bases around the world for testing their weapons. This video shows a few of their testing grounds I have to wonder out of the over 737 how many more are used for such tests. They are contaminating the world with Radiation. I think it’s time the people of the world all stood up and said no more DU or any other radioactive materials. The US has created more illness around the world then you could ever imagine.

DU Contaminates Europe
This is about how Radiation DU can travel and how it did to the UK because of the War in Iraq. A rather interesting read. Seems the wind blows and it goes. Like one needs to be a rocket scientists to figure that one out. It also travels anywhere else the wind blows. Seems a lot of Europe is now contaminated. I am guessing Bush knew this but like everything else Lied. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out either.Bunker Busters
This is an animation of a Bunker Buster. It also give an idea of how radiation is easily spread. At this point have apparently been scraped.

Recent reports suggest that the Bush administration is considering
using nuclear weapons against Iran. The very fact that nuclear weapon
use is being discussed as an option—against a state that does not have
nuclear weapons and does not represent a direct or imminent threat to
the United States—illustrates the extent to which the Bush
administration has changed U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

“The Bush administration has explicitly rejected the basic precept
that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons should be to deter the
use of nuclear weapons. It has assigned a new, and provocative, mission
to U.S. nuclear weapons: to dissuade or prevent other countries from
undertaking military programs that could threaten U.S. interests in the
future. A ‘preventive’ nuclear attack on Iran would fall into this
category. It has also blurred the line between nuclear and conventional
weapons by declaring that nuclear weapons can be used as part of
military operations.

“This nuclear policy increases the likelihood that nuclear weapons
will be used, and ultimately decreases U.S. as well as international
security. Instead, the United States should commit itself to strengthen
the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons that has developed over
the past 60 years.

“Plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran also fail to recognize
the immediate dangers inherent in the use of nuclear weapons. The
administration is reportedly considering using the B61-11 nuclear
‘bunker buster’ against an underground facility near Natanz, Iran. The
use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout
that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other
nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of
casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand, depending on
the weapon yield and weather conditions.

“Threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran provides the
strongest of incentives for nuclear proliferation, since it would send
the message that the only way for a country to deter nuclear attack is
to acquire its own nuclear arsenal. The administration cannot have its
cake and eat it, too—it cannot have a viable nuclear non-proliferation
policy while continually expanding the roles for its own nuclear
weapons.”

I really didn’t want to look at this page again, but here’s what I’m talking about.
[Warning: heartbreakingly, mindnumbingly, soulscreamingly graphic photos!]
THAT is why DU *IS* considered a WMD, illegal under international law – a full-blown Crime Against Humanity!

In Russia I believe it was after bomb testing near a town these same things happened. I remember a documentary I watched on it. The doctors documented all the cases. Right down to children being born with no eyes. There were tons of cases of deformities. Also mentally challenged children being born. Life expectancy was extremely short as well. Cancer rates etc were over whelming. Those pictures reminded me of that Documentary. Exactly the same thing.

Triggering of Landslides, Tsunamis and Earthquakes
At least one major test-related landslide and consequent Tsunami in Moruroa, on July 25, 1979. Apparently, the 120kiloton weapon, which was supposed to be lowered into a shaft of 800 meters, got stuck at a depth of 400 meters and could not be dislodged. The French authorities decided to explode the device anyway. This explosion resulted in a major underwater landslide of at least one million cubic meters of coral and rock and created a cavity, probably 140 meters in diameter. The underwater landslide produced a major tidal wave comparable to a tsunami, which spread through the Tuamotu Archipelago and injured

“Hiroshima, 70 Times Over. ”
hey folks, this is, uh, intelligent??“Hiroshima, 70 Times Over. That is what ONE
so-called “Bunker Buster” bomb would unleash.
Calling this a “Bunker Buster” is like calling the bomb
used on Hiroshima” a few fireworks. ” The US Government decided not to use them right after the recent Earth Quake in Pakistan, Afganistan and India.

ArmyIn Vietnam, between 1964 and 1975, 47,410 Americans died in combat,
while another 10,788 died from other causes, a total of 58,198.1 During
Operation Desert Storm, the reported combat deaths were 148, with another
235 dying from other causes.2

Veterans’ advocates say statistics from Desert Storm should be much higher,
however, reflecting the impact of Gulf War Illness.

Former U.S. Air Force Captain Joyce Riley, for example, expects that in the
next 10 years – or 22 years after the conflict – deaths among the veterans
deployed to the Persian Gulf will rise to between 80,000 and 100,000.

These are some of the atrocities that are caused by the DU weapons used in the Middle East since the first Gulf War. The effects of DU are taking their tolls on civilians, as well as U.S. servicemen and their new born children.

While the use of DU in the 1991 Gulf War was not denied, it is striking that amid all the post-war hype over the success of expensive, high tech weaponry, DU weapons received surprisingly little public praise from Pentagon and US defence industry officials, in the wake of the war.
The US and other NATO governments have always refused to admit to any serious health risks from DU, or to acknowledge the so-called Gulf War Syndrome illnesses suffered by their former soldiers (let alone the “enemy” victims), and the US has consistently refused to even test its Gulf vets.
However, it is abundantly clear that the US authorities have always been aware of DU’s lethal properties, and their silence and refusal to countenance any ill effects from DU, is motivated by a desire to keep on using it, as well as the fear of a flood of compensation claims from their own soldiers (let alone reparations from their victims). The parallels with Agent Orange in Vietnam are all too clear, but the stakes are far higher this time.

Early Knowledge

As early as October 30th 1943, senior scientists from the Manhattan Project (the American WW2 drive to develop the atomic bomb) sent a letter to their director, General Leslie Groves, actually discussing the use of DU as a terrain contaminant, a gas warfare instrument for inhalation and ingestion (“gas” probably refers to the aerosol clouds), and a contaminator of the environment. They predicted (with, as we can now see, great accuracy) that uranium inhalation would lead to:bronchial irritation coming on in a few hours to a few days … Beta emitting products could get into the gastrointestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air. From the air, they would get on the mucus of the nose, throat bronchi, etc and be swallowed.This proposed usage of DU was not pursued, because its effects were deemed too drastic and longlasting, for the sensibilities of the wartime Allied leaders.
Sources: Dr Doug Rokke and Dr Helen Caldicott

In the late 1950s, the Tennesse senator Al Gore Senior (father of the failed 2000 US presidential candidate), proposed dousing the demilitarized zone in Korea with uranium as a cheap safeguard against an attack from the North Koreans.

The Pentagon Memos

Given all the evidence that they were always aware of the dangers, it may seem surprising that no action has so far been taken by any western government to halt the use of DU munitions, or properly investigate its impact on civilians and soldiers.
The reason why they are so protective of their silver bullet is probably encapsulated in the now infamous March 1991 memo from Lt. Colonel Ziehmn of Los Alamos National Laboratory (one of the Pentagon’s main nuclear research centres), stating:There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and be deleted from the arsenal.
If DU penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) through Service/DoD proponency.<!– The memo ends: I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind, when, after action, reports are written. –>Source: Canada’s CBC TV – image of original memo
Translation: DU is militarily useful, so don’t make a fuss about the dangers

At about the same time, Greg Lyle at the US Defence Nuclear Agency sent this memo to Dr Doug Rokke (head of the US cleanup team in the Gulf), indicating their awareness of the dangers:Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with possible exposure rates of 200 millirads per hour on contact.Source: Canada’s CBC TV – feature on DU
NB: Levels of 200 millirads/hour and more were subsequently measured in the Gulf War battlefields, thus exceeding in 30 mins, the recommended US annual radiation dose of 100 millirads.

An eerily prescient July 1990 US Army report (ie. the month before Saddam invaded Kuwait), called Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environmental and Health Considerations, had already predicted that large amounts of DU oxides could be inhaled, with “potential radiological and toxicological effects”, and had warned that public knowledge of the dangers of DU could lead to pressure to ban it. The report also acknowledged that:Assuming US regulatory standards and health physics practices are followed, it is likely that some form of remedial action will be required in a DU post-combat environment.However, after the scale and cost of cleaning up the DU residue in the post-war Persian Gulf region became clear, the US Army Environmental Policy Institute informed American policymakers in a June 1995 report (Health and Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the US army), that:no international law, treaty, regulation, or custom requires the United States to remediate the Persian Gulf War battlefields.Source: Fahey report, Depleted Uranium Weapons – Lessons from the 1991 Gulf War (Lesson 5)

Despite their denials, the Pentagon obviously knew well that DU was dangerous. The June 1995 US Army report referred to above, also stated that:Depleted uranium is a low-level radioactive waste and, therefore, must be be desposed of in a licensed repository.As the journalist Felicity Arbuthnot remarked, the report does not advise disposing of it on a school, hospital, TV station or Chinese embassy.

The UKAEA Warning

Back in the UK, Mr Bartholomew, Business Development Manager at UKAEA, sent a classified paper to the Royal Ordnance on 30 April 1991 (ie. 2 months after Gulf War), warning of a health and environmental catastrophe in Iraq and Kuwait. The UKAEA had calculated that if 50 tonnes of DU dust were inhaled, half a million deaths from cancer would potentially result within 10 years, and his covering letter added:The whole subject of the contamination of Kuwait is emotive and thus must be dealt with in a sensitive manner. It is necessary to inform the Kuwait government of the problem in a useful way.This memo’s existence was disclosed on 2nd March 1998, by UK Armed Forces Minister Lord Gilbert, in response to information tabled in the House of Lords, but was then downplayed by both the British government and media.
In fact, Gilbert’s reply that day shows a breathtaking level of ignorance (or more likely, dishonesty) of the facts about DU. Furthermore, the UKAEA paper itself relied on the ICRP’s radiation guidelines, which anti-radiation campaigners such as the LLRC bitterly dispute.
Source: Lords Hansard, 02 March 1998 (includes UKAEA paper and Bartholomew’s covering letter)
Also reported by Felicity Arbuthnot, in the Sunday Herald, 14 January 2001

The Cleanup Team – Dying To Decontaminate The Battlefield

During the Gulf War, the physicist Dr Doug Rokke was recalled to active duty 20 years after serving in Vietnam, and he served with the US Army Preventive Medicine Command, helping to prepare for nuclear/chemical/biological exposures.
After the war, he led the Theatre Depleted Uranium Assessment Team (a handful of officers and civilians), cleaning up contaminated American vehicles that had been hit by DU rounds, and in 1994 he was recalled again, as Director of the army’s Depleted Uranium Project.

In accordance with his directives, Dr Rokke compiled training manuals and videos for assessing, containing and cleaning up DU munitions, and caring for contaminated casualties. His team also made several explicit recommendations: the immediate clean-up of all affected sites, medical screening for anyone possibly exposed to DU, strict use of protective and detection equipment, and prevention of recycling of any materials possibly contaminated.
However, the US military declined to disseminate these instructional materials amongst the US and Allied forces, or to the civilian medical personnel treating affected populations. Nor did the US military comply with any of his recommendations. Rokke asserts that this is motivated by financial concerns, and fears of massive settlements and war reparations.
Dr Rokke now calls for a permanent ban on DU (including on the recycling of it for use in civilian products) and for the US to shoulder the cleanup and medical costs of using DU in Iraq.

At the time of their cleanup operation in the Gulf, Rokke and his team were not equipped with protective gear, or given training about what to expect. They only wore surgical masks rather than gas masks (which might have kept out the DU particles, but then again, they had never been advised to wear them), due to the desert heat.
They measured radioactive emissions inside destroyed vehicles at 2.6 to 10 mSv/hour. The maximum permissible radiation dose to members of the public is 1 mSv per year, so Iraqis (and the many US vets) who entered these vehicles received this in less than an hour.
Dr Rokke’s team also discovered that DU projectiles fragmented in the same way when fired at wooden targets, contradicting official claims that the uranium oxide dust would only result from impact with the most heavily armoured Iraqi tanks. The implications of this, are that there are much larger quantities of DU oxide floating around southern Iraq.
Within weeks of returning to the US, Rokke’s cleanup team began to fall ill. Over 20 of the 100-strong team died in the following 8 years (so said Dr Rokke at the November 1999 CASI conference, where he summarised his findings in the Gulf as “Oh my God !” – Rokke’s presentation is Session 6), and virtually all the rest are ill. Rokke himself suffers from several ailments, including short-term memory loss, breathing difficulties and vision problems.
He reports a catalogue of obstruction, interference, deception and the discarding/destruction of evidence, by US officials. He describes how one 1994 checkup revealed that he had 5,000 times the permissible level of uranium in his body, but he was not told for another two and a half years (thus preventing correlation of symptons with this known exposure – a common experience of sick Gulf War vets).
If Rokke’s experience in the Gulf demonstrates one thing, it is that the cleanup cost is incalculable – if indeed it’s still physically possible. His team took three months to clean up 24 tanks for transport back to the US. The army then took another three years to fully decontaminate them, in a purpose-built vacuum-sealed plant in South Carolina.Dr Rokke addresses US Senate, 10 November 2000Hansard, 15 December 1999 – Dr Rokke gives evidence to UK Parliament’s Select Committee on DefenceDisaster News Network interview with Dr Rokke, 28 December 2002 – updates the number of subsequent deaths on his 100-strong cleanup team to 30.

Plutonium Contamination

The January 2001 book, Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War by Martin Meissonnier, Federic Loore and Roger Trilling (published by Robert Laffont, France), was among the first to report that uranium at the US plants which process DU was contaminated with transuranics – highly radioactive elements including plutonium. The plants were meant to process natural uranium, but in the 1950s, without notifying the workers or surrounding communities, the US Department of Energy decided to reprocess spent fuel from military nuclear reactors.
In other words, the many hundreds of tonnes of DU fired in the Gulf and in the Balkans contained elements many thousands of times more dangerous than U238. It was in response to a 17th January 2001 question from Roger Trilling, that the Pentagon (in the the shape of spokesman, Kenneth Bacon) first acknowledged the plutonium contamination which independent scientists began to suspect in the early 1990s.Lara Marlowe – Irish Times, 1st February 2001

On 20th January 2000, the US Energy Secretery revealed in a written response to Tara Thornton of the MTP that:One would have to assume depleted uranium includes traces of plutonium.Der Spiegel – 23rd January 2001

Traces of U236 (a highly radioactive man-made isotope of uranium), plutonium and other transuranics have since been found in American DU munitions. DU produced by other countries such as Russia and Pakistan may be even “dirtier” than the US stockpile. Indeed, depleted uranium should perhaps be better known as uranium-plus.

See The Fire This Time’s plutonium page, for more information on the plutonium contamination.

Disinformation and Sophistry in Collusion

In a brazen illustration of the power of the nuclear industry to evade inspection, the WHO is bound by a 1959 agreement with its fellow UN agency, the IAEA, which gives the unequivocally pro-nuclear IAEA a veto over any attempts by the WHO to research the effects of radiation.
As if to reinforce the point, the US Government, supported by some 40 countries including the UK, voted to cancel a WHO study into the effects of DU on civilians in Iraq in November 2001 – even if the WHO limited itself to the toxicological effects. However, the UN Sub-Committee on Minorities and Human Rights has charged three times that DU is a weapon of mass destruction.

Which is not to say there’s no official research going into the effects of DU. The Olin Corporation is the main US manufacturer of DU anti-tank rounds, and its foundation is generous in funding DU research – “research” which purports to show that DU has no harmful effects …

In December 1984, the FAA issued Advisory Circular 20-123 – Avoiding or Minimizing Encounters With Aircraft Equipped With Depleted Uranium Balance Weights During Accident Investigations.
It is still in effect, and states:If particles are inhaled or digested, they can be chemically toxic and cause a significant and long-lasting irradiation of internal tissue.It advises investigators to wear protective clothing at crash sites, and dispose of them afterwards as radioactive waste.
Source: From The Wilderness – November 2001
So the FAA didn’t and doesn’t think DU is safe either !

Bill Mesler writes in the The Nation, 13 May 1997, about how the Pentagon covered up the test-firing of DU in its bases on allied territory.Pentagon Poison: The Great Radioactive Ammo Cover-Up
But why would they want to conceal such a perfectly harmless activity ?

OSAGWI InvestigationsIn 1997 the Pentagon established OSAGWI, and after 5 years it had spent nearly $150 million without ever publishing one medical research report or offering a single treatment program for ill Gulf War veterans.
In fact, as of 1998, only 24 GWS victims had ever been examined for uranium in their lungs – and that was prior to OSAGWI’s establishment. Using old insensitive equipment, Dr Belton Burroughs and Dr David Slingerland of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston, were able to identify 14 of the 24 as having measurable amounts of DU in their lungs.
Their testing was then ordered to stop, and all their records were subsequently “lost”. Some urine samples were sent to the US Army Radiochemistry Laboratory in Maryland, for testing. Some of them never reached the laboratory, and the results of those that did were supposedly “lost”. After Dr Asaf Durakovic, an internationally recognized expert in internal radioactive contamination, testified about this to the US Congress, he subsequently lost his job with the VA (a Pentagon agency) in 1997.from Dr Bertell’s 7th May 1998 address at University of Toronto

As concern over GWS and the disaster in Iraq began to grow, an OSAGWI-funded RAND report, A Review of the Scientific Literature as it Pertains to Gulf War Illnesses, Volume 7: Depleted Uranium, was issued in April 1999 and (in contradiction of all the prior official reports and memos I’ve already quoted) repeated officialdom’s public denials that DU was harmful. It also employed a recurring trick, by obfuscating the meaning of the term “natural” uranium, eg. at one point they state that DU is less radioactive than natural uranium (which can only be true if by “natural”, they mean the post-mining but pre-enrichment metal), and then they go on to state that the natural level of uranium concentrations in our water have never done us any harm (but this type of “natural” uranium is millions of times more diffuse than the refined metal – in fact, uranium does not even exist as a solid metal in nature).
Dan Fahey (Gulf War vet who served as a naval officer, and is now an anti-DU and veterans-rights activist with the NGWRC, MTP and Swords to Plowshares) responded with a series of four reports: Dod Analysis I in April 1999, Dod Analysis II: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in June 1999, A Fear of Falling in August 1999 and Don’t Look, Don’t Find in March 2000.
Fahey attacked the RAND report as biased and incomplete, charging that it made no reference to over 100 relevant information sources, and ignored known studies which demonstrated a clear relationship between DU and harm to human health – for example, those carried out by the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute. He demonstrated that the RAND authors (one of whom was a member of OSAGWI staff) were clearly ignorant of much existing literature about DU hazards and previous experiments (literature which the RAND report claimed to have reviewed) and they had also based their conclusions on faulty DU exposure estimates provided by the Pentagon. Furthermore, significant information from OSAGWI interviews was also missing from the body of the RAND report.

In a broader critique of the Pentagon’s track record, he points out that not one of the US friendly-fire casualties hit by DU munitions was even tested till the DU Program was established in 1993, and then only a handful were monitored. Even when one of that handful later developed a tumour, the RAND report didn’t mention that, and in fact when VA doctors removed the tumour, they refused to release it to the patient, for independent testing.
In A Fear of Falling, Fahey damns the Pentagon thus:US military leaders are trying to ensure the unrestricted future use and proliferation of depleted uranium weapons, while attempting to conceal their past failures to prevent DU exposures. Through public relations campaigns disguised as investigations, military leaders promote the illusion of the ‘clean’ war where no one dies, and no one gets sick.

In Don’t Look Don’t Find, Fahey brings up the issue of plutonium contamination, and refers to a 1963 study that showed plutonium levels in the DU stockpile to be hundreds of times above established limits. He concludes that the burden of proof is on the Pentagon, as to whether DU ammunition contained high levels, or merely trace amounts, of plutonium and other transuranics.
Some earlier DU papers by Dan Fahey include:

UK Royal SocietyIn May 2001, the UK Royal Society – an establishment body, manned by a cosy self-congratulatory coterie of the great and good in waiting for their knighthoods – got in on the denial game, by publishing its own report on DU, Health Hazards of Depleted Uranium Munitions. This report was based on a review of existing literature, rather than any new investigations of their own, and contained the astounding claim that a soldier inside any vehicle struck by a DU penetrator – the most dangerous scenario – has only a slightly increased risk of lung cancer.
Their report was derided by the LLRC, which described their findings as “absolute nonsense” and “lying” and also criticised their methodology, for not taking into account the specific hazards of internal radiation sources.
The Laka Foundation’s June 2001 review gave the Royal Society credit for at least allowing Dr Chris Busby of the LLRC to address them, but was otherwise no kinder to their report.
Dr Malcolm Hooper, advisor to the British Gulf War vets, also criticised their report, on 14 June 2001.

In March 2002, the Royal Society produced a follow-up report on the health effects of DU, concentrating on the chemical and long-term environmental risks. It concluded that even for soldiers on the battlefield, exposure levels would be too low to have any adverse effect on any organ. Dr Chris Busby of the LLRC made a series of suggestions to the report’s draft copy all of which were ignored in the final copy, and which led him to conclude that:There was no real intention to research the area except in ways that were guaranteed not to find anything.
Similarly Malcolm Hooper, Chief Medical advisor to the British Gulf War Veterans commented that:This is an attempt to give a scientific imprimatur to the stance of the government, which is unacceptable.
See CADU and NRPB comments on the Royal Society’s work.

Canadian DU Researchers Pay The Price – The Case Of Sharma And HoranIn April 1999, Dr Hari Sharma, a nuclear chemist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, found DU traces in the urine of 14 British vets, out of a group of 30 who had send him their samples. Based on his findings, he predicted 1,500 to 10,500 extra cancers among the UK cohort of 53,000 vets.
Soon after, he was sent soil and urine samples by some Wolverhampton prison officers after a fire at a neighbouring DU factory (see Featherstone fire, on UK page), but was sacked from his 30-year university post before they arrived. The samples then went “missing”.
Patricia Horan, a geochemist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, later backed up Dr Sharma’s results for the British vets, using more sensitive equipment. She worked on DU from 1999, but was forced out of her job in July 2002 (and her assistant was dismissed on the same day), having already experienced break-ins and burglaries, and harrassment by her new boss. In August 2002, she co-published her findings with Dietz and Durakovic of the UMRC.BBC, 27 August 1999

Dirty TricksThe references to the handling of GWS on the other pages of this site, provide many more examples of the official obstruction of any investigations.
Indeed, they often went beyond that, into intimidation and coercion. The 7th September 2001 Big Issue even reported that Dr Doug Rokke had been shot at, the journalist Felicity Arbuthnot rammed off the road on the A11 in Cambridgeshire by an unmarked car, and British vet Ray Bristow’s DU research stolen in a burglary.
However, I have been unable to find alternative corroboration of any of these stories, apart from Ray Bristow’s burglary (which was actually a raid by MoD police, and is documented in Arbuthnot’s September 1999 New Internationalist article, Poisoned Legacy). This undated Squall article gives a bit more detail, but appears to be based on the same source.
There are also reports of unknown authenticity, that Dr Guenther was seriously injured by a drive-by shooting in Germany.

San Francisco – “Hundreds of thousands of additional deaths and maimings is the Bay Area’s thanks for being good neighbors to these the ‘good Germans,’ the desk murderers, who are just following orders,” stated Pat Gray, long time San Francisco Bay Area resident and former Green candidate for Congress.

“A group of citizens of the Bay Area are seeking a lawyer to take legal action to stop the open air explosions set off by Livermore Lab in Tracy, California,” she announced. “These open air explosions are sending clouds of depleted uranium oxide gas all over the Bay Area. It is well know that depleted uranium gas is a carcinogen and causes serious birth defects.

“Our nation has signed a treaty to stop doing nuclear explosions in the open air – but this is what Livermore Lab is doing and has been for the last 46 years. Now they have the hubris to request permission to increase the number of explosions. We hope that with legal assistance we can force the testing to be done underground.”

Lori Brim cradled her son in her arms for three months before he died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Dustin Brim, a 22-year-old Army specialist had collapsed three years ago in Iraq from a very aggressive cancer that attacked his kidney, caused a mass to grow over his esophagus and collapsed a lung.

A physician in Northern California was being trained in the Pentagon with other physicians months before the 2003 Gulf War started. They were told to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only. Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail terms.

How Much Depleted Uranium Has Been Used?

Depleted uranium weapons were developed by the U.S. Navy in 1968. Depleted uranium weapons were given to and used by Israel with U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 against the Arabs nations. Military research detailed the use of DU weapons at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and civilian labs under contracts between 1974-1999. Presently 42 states have contamination from the manufacture, testing and deployment of depleted uranium. The United States has sold DU weapons to 29 countries.

Downwinders is a research and educational foundation started by former downwind resident of southwest Utah, and formally established in 1978 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Downwinders takes its name from the residents living in the prevailing wind pattern surrounding the Nevada Test Site, and who have been constantly exposed to radioactive fallout from America’s nuclear testing activities conducted there. Downwinders was founded with two primary goals:

To expose the plight of downwind residents whose fallout exposures have caused cancers, leukemia, and other illnesses, and to obtain justice for their injuries.

To fight for an immediate end to all nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site and elsewhere.

Since its founding Downwinders has expanded its efforts to other nuclear, military, and environmental projects and issues where the health and safety of residents surrounding them have been placed at risk. Over the years these have included such problems as chemical and biological weapons research and testing at the Dugway Proving Ground. Other issues of concern are high and low-level nuclear waste, uranium mining, milling and tailings disposal, phosphate mining and wastes, groundwater issues, land and air space grabs by the military, and military toxics. Downwinders has also expanded its scope of operations from regional work confined to the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada to one of global outreach.